The Third Wave Of Feminism

It’s been over 100 years now that women have been fighting for equal rights to their male counterparts, but it’s been even more years that women have had to struggle with being treated lesser than men under most circumstances. From being confined strictly to the house as a wife and mother, to working under extreme conditions with very little pay, to working in the same conditions as men but with less pay… It’s very obvious that women made a lot of much needed progress in the last century. While feminists have helped women come as far as they have within three proven waves of feminism, I feel as though the core values, ideas, and goals of feminism have changed. I will argue in this paper that not only are we amidst an undisclosed fourth wave …show more content…
What makes it different is they take a different stance on the issues and are a little more extreme. According to the Britannica website, “third-wave feminists sought to question, reclaim, and redefine the ideas, words, and media that have transmitted ideas about womanhood, gender, beauty, sexuality, femininity, and masculinity, among other things.” Third wave feminists wanted to diversify “womanhood” by including even more ethnicities, identities, and even trans people. They also wanted to get rid of the terms “male” and “female” because they felt as though they were artificial terms that were created by humans only to establish dominance. Third wave feminists sought out to finish what second wave feminists started, but to a different extreme; hoping to come out strong and get rid of the “victim” persona women in past movements had received from the general public because of their …show more content…
By this, I mean that no one has actually declared that we are in the fourth wave, but it is something that’s up in the air and is a popular theory. There are some people that will argue that this wave of feminism is beneficial and goes along with all the others, such as a woman named Laura Bates who is well known in today’s feminist community: “Her Everyday Sexism Project has proved so successful that it was rolled out to 17 countries on its first anniversary this year, tens of thousands of women worldwide writing about the street harassment, sexual harassment, workplace discrimination and body-shaming they encounter” (Cochrane). Bates is an active feminist who pushes for today’s general ideas of women’s rights. While many modern day feminists have many valid points and arguments, such as fighting against sexual harassment and workplace discrimination, I highly disagree that they are beneficial to the feminist movement as a whole. Being a young adult in a somewhat entitled generation, I have seen a lot of young women who claim they are feminists and many less men. What I see more often now is women pushing to be treated better than men and be held at a lower standard. Just for example, the idea that women shouldn’t be put to the same standards when it comes to causing someone of the opposite sex physical harm; many feminists today think that women should be able to hit a man