| bdbdbd said: You know, that's kind of pointless argumentation. His point was, that most of the people that are pro-equality, are not feminists. Being a feminist means that you have feministic worldview. This worldview is what people are rejecting. |
You could've asked people 50 years ago if they supported gender equality and two-thirds would've said yes. That doesn't mean that they actually understood what it meant. Likewise, if you poll today's youth, most of them say that, in principle, they support equality between men and women. Yet when asked less subjective, more specific questions like whether they think it's best for men to be the main income-earners and for women to stay at home and take care of the house and raise the children, roughly a majority of today's American young men agree with that idea and nearly one-third say that there are circumstances under which it is acceptable to force someone to have sex with you against their will (which most of them somehow differentiate from rape). And those aren't Trump voters either. Those, statistically speaking, are the "progressive" Bernie Sanders voters.
| GribbleGrunger said: Only the vocal minority are 'evil', the others know their place. |
And what would you say is my place?
VGPolyglot said:
It's about not being mistreated just for being a woman. |
Exactly. It's not particularly hard to find examples either in 2017 America. You just have to turn on the news and it's right there in front of your face. A few months ago, for instance, we had the largest protest action in the history of this country. Over 3 million Americans participated, about 80% of whom were female. It was called the Women's March. Do you figure that happened just for no reason...or could it have been that many, many, many, many, MANY people -- and women in particular -- were lamenting the "election" of a self-confessed rapist whose family fortune traces to a brothel owner? Or if you turned on the TV last night, you might have noticed that the highest-rated news anchor in America, Bill O'Reilly, was just fired for decades of sexual harassment and discrimination...as was his boss, Roger Ailes, last year (both of whom were vigorously defended by the current President of the United States). Just turn on the news in 2017 and you're bound to find examples of sexism and its consequences because it's all over the place.
Some of us see these sorts of things things and think to ourselves that maybe there is still a real problem here.
Aeolus451 said:
You're wrong. That's what is 2nd wave feminism is but not 3rd wave. Lawlight is right. It's become twisted and it's lost credibility. Most people who believe in equality of the sexes don't identify as feminists. |
VGPolyglot said:
There is no unified 3rd wave feminism. There's liberal feminists, socialist feminists, etc. that have different views and goals. |
Personally, I tend to define the essence of each wave by the prevailing sorts of ideas held by its advance guard. For example, we could say that the first wave was defined by a Christian worldview and the second more by Marxist ideas (as the Redstockings groups formed the vanguard) like seeing women as an oppressed class in need of organizing (hence Marx-inspired slogans like "Women of the World, Unite!"). The more recent pair of waves -- the third and the fourth -- have been guided more by different strains of individualist thinking out of an ambition to broaden the movement and challenge traditional gender roles, the crux of which has been that each woman should be encouraged to define feminism for herself (which could be contrasted with the second wave's stress on common interests). The third wave originated with anarchistic punk bands called riot grrrl groups who tended to embrace postmodernist and/or post-structuralist ideas. (I grew up sort of in the midst of the third wave.) That wave might alternately termed "the girl power wave", as it tended to stress assertive, powerful roles for women comparable to those of men and the submerging of female identity. The fourth, current wave, originated online with organizations like Feministing and later Jezebel and is defined by a more of a humanist outlook that seeks to embrace female identity and insist upon authentic, diverse representations and humane treatment. And of course each of these waves has had its vanguard and its more conservative sections. The most recent two tend to be more liberal than the others (e.g. more supportive of lesbians, trans women, sexual liberty, etc.) due to their individualistic guiding philosophies, but perhaps less organized.
There are still second, third, and fourth wave groups out there right now. For example, here's a second wave feminist site.
As for me, I consider myself a waveless feminist who is philosophically agnostic. I think all of these waves have had their good points and bad points.
