The Re-Emergence Of The Feminist Movement

What is feminism? According to Amy Kesselman in Illuminating How Identities, Stereotypes and Inequalities Matter through Gender Studies, Feminism by definition is “the belief women have been subordinate to men as well as to commitment to working for freedom in all aspects of social life”. Women have gone down a long, winding road when it comes recieving their rights. The feminist movement first stemmed all the way from the 1890’s when women joined efforts in prohibition. Women, during this time period, desperately advocated for prohibition because often times men would come home drunk and beat their wives. The next major re-emergence of feminism came around 1920 when women got suffrage. This was the first time in history that women received …show more content…
Bra Burners demonstrated women’s apathetic view on past gender roles and defying stereotypes. Women did this out of protest against the Miss America Pageants held out of rage and discontent. This was symbolic during the second wave, signifying a rebirth of what it means to be a women and reshaped traditional stereotypes. As quoted from the documentary, “She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry”, women apart of the Women’s Lib shared that they would “burn their bras and other instruments of female torture”. Although there were a lot of victories in the second wave, there was also strife, disjunction, and internal conflict within the lib. Homosexuality raised many concerns as lesbians, bisexualsand even women of color criticized white women’s domination of the liberation. With the already existing forces of oppression and apathy painted the movement in a negative light. Because of this, the movement began to push stronger from personal issues to global …show more content…
This wave stems from the early 1990s to as recent as 2012. Third wave feminism “rejects grand narratives for a feminism that operates as a hermeneutics of critique within a wide array of discursive locations, and replaces attempts at unity with a dynamic and welcoming politics of coalition”. In simpler terms, the scope of third wave feminism views issues in a broader sense, focusing on global and academic feminism. However, there has been a broad notion that the feminist movement ended in the late 1900s and that the third wave of feminism was a “postfeminism”. Postfeminism was a notion that feminism wasn’t deemed necessary and that all of the concerns regarding equality, were addressed in the second wave of feminism. Postmodern feminism includes an intersectional component, and created a controversy whether gender is natural or socially constructed. Postfeminist began to grow a discontent with that “feminist” label from the growing negative connotations, so many post feminists simply shared some feminist ideals without labeling themselves as such. The new wave was led by Generation X, focusing on issues presented in the media and political