Ungrateful Daughters
Ungrateful Daughters:
Third Wave Feminist Writings
By
Justyna Wlodarczyk
Ungrateful Daughters: Third Wave Feminist Writings,
by Justyna Wlodarczyk
This book first published 2010
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2010 by Justyna Wlodarczyk
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-4438-2369-4, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-2369-2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction ................................................................................................. 1
Chapter One............................................................................................... 15
The Third Wave: Politics of Style, Aesthetics of Contradiction
Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 59
First Person Singular: The Phenomenon of Third Wave Anthologies
Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 95
Passing and the Fictions of Third Wave Subjectivity: Rebecca Walker,
Danzy Senna, Dorothy Allison
Chapter Four ............................................................................................ 137
Revolution Grrrl Style Now: Michelle Tea and the Post-Punk
Queer Avant-Garde
Conclusion............................................................................................... 167
Works Cited............................................................................................. 171
Index........................................................................................................ 185
INTRODUCTION
0.0. On feminism and fluoride
For our generation feminism is like fluoride. We scarcely notice that we
have it–it’s simply in the water.1
—Baumgardner and Richards, Manifesta
The feminism-fluoride metaphor, coined by Jennifer Baumgardner and
Amy Richards in Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future to
describe the impact of feminism on the generation born in the 1970s and
early 1980s, has become hugely popular since the publication of their book
in 2000. Judging from the number of times it has been quoted in other
publications, on the web and in popular conversations, it is the third
wave’s leading metaphor. Ironically, the one third wave metaphor which
has made history concerns feminism’s invisibility.2 Not only is it
strikingly non-visual, fluoride being something one can hardly imagine or
draw a picture of, it is also, probably unintentionally, very contextspecific; water fluoridation, as an element of prevention of dental caries,
was implemented in the largest cities in the United States, and hardly
anywhere else in the world. Thus the effects of fluoridation are very much
like the effects of the second wave of feminism, a typically American and
urban phenomenon. The original use of this metaphor is characteristic of
the often internally contradictory character of third wave discourse
revealed upon closer analysis–fluoridation is meant to stand for something
ubiquitous, which in reality it is not; it is intended as something positive
(prevents cavities), yet it has been strongly opposed on the grounds of
causing discoloration of the teeth and the weakening of bones. Third wave
1
Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards. Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism
and the Future. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000, 17.
2
Interestingly, another metaphor of the Third Wave which has become very
popular also refers to its invisibility. Ednie Kaeh Garrison in “U.S. Feminism-Grrrl
Style! Youth Subcultures and the Technologies of the Third Wave” views the
waves in “third wave feminism” as radio waves rather than ocean waves (Garrison
151). Radio waves are something which is invisible and yet permeates all walls
and boundaries.
2
Introduction
feminism proudly embraces contradiction as a strategy, yet the question of
how self-aware it is of the contradictions it contains remains open.
While the fluoride metaphor was originally used to describe the impact
of second wave feminism on younger women, it is also a useful way of
looking at the topic of this book. The reflection of third wave sensibility in
recent literature by American women writers has so far gone largely
unnoticed, even though numerous young writers openly embrace their
membership in the contemporary women’s movement. Conversely, quite a
lot of academic research has been done on decoding postfeminist discourse
in fiction and popular culture, possibly because of the immense popularity
of certain forms of popular cultural productions exhibiting postfeminist
sensibilities, for example, television series like Ally McBeal, Desperate
Housewives and Sex in the City,3 the romantic comedy, “girl power”
cartoons and chick lit. Another possible reason for the lack of critical
interest in third wave writing is the confusion between postfeminism and
third wave feminism, and the incorporation, more or less conscious, of
postfeminist discourse into third wave ideology and writing. The aim of
this book is not to resolve this confusion, but to reveal its sources and
mechanisms; to show the third wave’s troubled relationship with the
second wave; its opposition to postfeminism and its simultaneous
engagement in postfeminist discourse; to present the writings of some
talented young women whose work has, so far, been largely unnoticed. To
begin with, I need to briefly analyze the differences between postfeminism
and third wave feminism.
0.1. Why not postfeminism?
The third wave declares itself to be steadfastly and adamantly opposed to
postfeminism, as seen, for example, in my analysis of the “founding
documents” of the third wave presented in Chapter I. However, not much
effort is placed by the authors of these documents on a thorough definition
of postfeminism and on explaining specifically why and how the third
wave differs from this discourse. I would like to make the claim that the
third wave is actually informed by postfeminism at least as much as it is
opposed to it, although third wavers themselves are often not aware of this
fact. This lack of awareness is a result mostly of the anti-academic
character of the third wave and of the confusion resulting from the
multiple and somewhat contradictory uses of the term postfeminism.
3
See, for example, Janet McCabe and Kim Akass (eds.) Reading Sex and the City,
Janet McCabe (ed.) Reading Desperate Housewives.
Ungrateful Daughters: Third Wave Feminist Writings
3
Interestingly, this very anti-academic character is also responsible for the
third wave’s unconscious incorporation of some aspects of contemporary
cultural theories. As a result, in third wave writings and ideology we can
trace which elements of the academic understanding of postfeminism have
transpired to the general public.
The biggest problem with defining postfeminism is the existence of
multiple meanings of the term, all of which deserve to be presented in
order to analyze their connection to third wave feminism. The first
meaning, or rather range of meanings, refers to the critique of feminism’s
rigid stance on identity politics and the need for drawing connections
between feminism and other philosophical ideas. Ann Brooks, in her
introduction to Postfeminisms: Feminism, Cultural Theory and Cultural
Forms explains that “the term [postfeminism] is now understood as a
useful conceptual frame of reference encompassing the intersection of
feminism with a number of other anti-foundationalist movements including
postmodernism, post-structuralism and post-colonialism” (Brooks 1). In
this understanding postfeminism originates within 1970s feminist theory
and takes it a step further; develops some concepts, while problematizing
others.
The most contentious concept questioned by academic postfeminism is
that of identity. Obviously, one of the basic goals of second wave
feminism was raising the consciousness of women’s identity as women; as
a group sharing certain features, problems and life experiences. The
emergence of this identity was seen as necessary in order for the concept
of sisterhood to come into being, and for feminism to be effective in
achieving political change. However, while feminism was hard at work on
making women aware of the commonalities they shared, other movements,
more visible in the sphere of philosophy and cultural theory than in
politics, were questioning the notion of stable, fixed identity and
subjecthood. The urgency of recognizing the existence of these ideas and
incorporating them into feminism increased as feminism moved farther
from being only a political movement to a fully developed cultural theory,
or set of theories. As Elizabeth Wright writes in her account of the
emergence of postfeminism included in Lacan and Postfeminism: “the
emphasis upon collective action soon revealed internal strains through its
neglect of difference, first of class and colour, and ultimately of identity.
In part as a consequence, postfeminism began to participate in the
discourse of postmodernism since it destabilises any notion of a fixed and
whole-some subject” (Wright 6).
In a chronological analysis of how and why this need became
acknowledged, it is vital to point out the French 1970s “difference
4
Introduction
feminism” and theorists such as Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray, whose
ideas turned in a completely different direction from those prevalent at the
time in the Anglo-Saxon world, that is the belief that if the “playing field”
was leveled, if gender, understood as the socialization of girls into
femininity, was done away with, women and men would emerge as
basically similar, as simply human subjects. The trope of insurmountable
differences in subjectivity introduced by French feminists was later
developed by postcolonial theorists, such as, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,
Chandra Talpade Mohanty and Chela Sandoval. Other theorists, such as,
Judith Butler and Donna Haraway, began an inquiry into the validity of the
sex/gender distinction and carried out a radical denaturalization of the
body. Meanwhile the work of, for example, Linda Nicholson and Nancy
Fraser, examines the relationship of postmodernism and feminism,
emphasizing that each perspective can be helpful for the development of
the other one, as “postmodernists offer sophisticated and persuasive
criticisms of foundationalism and essentialism” while “feminists offer
robust conceptions of social criticism, but they tend at times to lapse into
foundationalism and essentialism” (Fraser and Nicholson 20). Postfeminism,
in this context, is understood as a successful mixing of the different
paradigms, but also, by virtue of the other “post” perspectives added to the
mixture, as a conceptual shift from debates about equality and ways of
achieving it to debates about difference.
Each of the theorists mentioned above is not exclusively a postfeminist
theorist and some of them would most probably object to being classified
as such, which is yet another problem with using postfeminism as a tool
for categorizing. By using it I am not embracing it, but simply trying to fill
in with names the conceptual framework sketched out by those who, like
Elizabeth Wright and Ann Brooks, see postfeminism as the incorporation
of other perspectives into feminism, in order not to reject feminism in
general but to criticize it from within. Wright observes:
Postfeminism has begun to consider the question of what the postmodern
notion of the dispersed unstable subject might bring it. […] Postfeminism
is continuously in process, transforming and changing itself. It does not
carry with it the assumption that previous feminist and colonialist
discourses, whether modernist or patriarchal, have been overtaken, but that
postfeminism takes a critical position in relation to them (5).
Such a view allows for fluidity, for constant reclassification and
renegotiation, thus making it possible to classify numerous theorists as
postfeminists. However, when using Anzaldua’s and Sandoval’s ideas in
Chapter III to analyze writings by Rebecca Walker and Danzy Senna, I
Ungrateful Daughters: Third Wave Feminist Writings
5
prefer to refer to them as “Third World feminists,” acknowledging the
contested nature of the term postfeminism.
Interestingly, and possibly unavoidably, this shift in feminism’s focus
from equality to difference was accompanied by another shift: the
separation of a unique and unified social movement with a theoretical
framework into two different ones: an academic trend and a political/social
ideology. From a time perspective, this split may look inevitable, but what
was remarkable about second wave feminism was the close connection
between theory and activism, maintained both on the conceptual and on
the personal level. Some of the most important theorists of feminism–to
mention just a few: Kate Millett, Shulamith Firestone, Robin Morgan,
Germaine Greer–were also well known as activists, appeared in the media
representing feminism as a political movement, participated in and
organized some of the more radical political actions. Postfeminism, even
though its echoes do transpire into popular culture, has never become an
ideology mobilizing the masses for action and its proponents have not
become the leaders of a social movement. Meanwhile, the types of street
activism which persisted into the 1980s and 1990s, such as pro-choice
marches organized mostly by NOW, the anti-pornography campaign and
activism in support of ERA, were ideologically stuck within second wave
identity politics and additionally tainted with the conservative discourse of
the 1980s.
The third wave’s relationship to this understanding of postfeminism is
usually rather naïve, though one aspect of the “academic” understanding
of postfeminism which third wavers comprehend is its impact on the
funneling of feminism into the academia and the focus on theory, even if
they are not sure what this theory is. This explains the third wave’s
adamantly anti-academic attitude and the attempt to pull feminism out of
the academia and back into the streets. Ironically, quite often third wavers
become aware of the existence of feminism while attending women’s
studies courses, which explains the high volume of campus activism
(Students Organizing Students, Take Back the Night, Voters for Choice).
Even though third wavers themselves are often not aware of the existence
of the theory sometimes classified as postfeminist, they are quite often
informed by it, as a result of the same mechanism which makes all cultural
theory relevant to popular culture–that is theory describes culture,
therefore culture reflects theory. This is one of the reasons why aspects of
postfeminism are a useful tool in the analysis of third wave literary texts,
as I demonstrate in this book, especially in Chapter III. The idea of fluid
and shifting subjectivity is explored in the writings of, for example,
Rebecca Walker and Danzy Senna.
6
Introduction
0.2. Postfeminism 2
The second definition of postfeminism, or rather the second group of
definitions, is connected to the mostly media generated trend of using the
word postfeminism to describe the contemporary world as one where the
goals of feminism have already been achieved and thus feminism is no
longer necessary. In Interrogating Postfeminism, an anthology exploring
how postfeminism functions as a concept in popular culture, Yvonne
Tasker and Diane Negra provide this definition: “[p]ostfeminism broadly
encompasses a set of assumptions, widely disseminated within popular
media forms, having to do with the ‘pastness’ of feminism, whether that
supposed pastness is merely noted, mourned, or celebrated” (Tasker and
Negra 1). Angela McRobbie’s definition, presented in her by now classic
article “Postfeminism and Popular Culture” is a lot less positive.
According to McRobbie, postfeminism is “an active process by which
feminist gains of the 1970s and 1980s come to be undermined” (McRobbie
27).
Tasker and Negra note that the term began to be used in the popular
media in the 1980s, and Chris Holmlund records the first use of “postfeminism” in a popular publication as a 1982 article in New York Times
Magazine titled “Voices from the Post-Feminist Generation,” but the real
popularization of the term as a discursive phenomenon and as a buzzword
took place in the 1990s. Most scholars evaluate postfeminism as a
discourse which is not ideologically neutral, but which, in fact, operates as
a tool of the conservative right and of the corporate media, although there
are scholars who imbue postfeminist cultural projects with subversive
potentiality.
According to postfeminist discourse, “the post-feminist generation” is
supposedly the age group born during or after the second wave of
feminism; the generation that has grown up with feminism and benefited
from its gains. As the beneficiaries of feminism, they are in a position to
make truly free lifestyle choices and to follow their individual inclinations
and talents at a time of equal opportunities for all. Angela McRobbie calls
this basic premise of postfeminism as the “taken into accountness”
(McRobbie 28) of feminism and claims that in postfeminist discourse the
gains of feminism can only be acknowledged, or taken into account, if
feminism is understood to have already passed. This is a basic reading
enabling a positive evaluation of feminism, which simultaneously allows
for thorough dismantling of feminist politics.
The “taking into account” of feminism leads to its dismantling through
ironic gestures signifying a simultaneous recognition of feminism (or
Ungrateful Daughters: Third Wave Feminist Writings
7
sexism) and the acknowledgment of the lack of need for employing the
feminist perspective. Postfeminist discourse seems to be saying: “yes, we
know this could be read as sexist, but in today’s sexism-free world we can
all enjoy it.” Among the many examples provided by McRobbie possibly
the strongest one is her analysis of a billboard “showing the model Eva
Herzigova looking down admirably at her substantial cleavage enhanced
by the lacy pyrotechnics of the Wonderbra” (32). This kind of
advertisement would have certainly been deemed as sexist in the 1970s,
but, as McRobbie claims, it is not a naïve reenactment of the sexist ads
from days gone by, but a highly ironic performance of sexism which gives
away the creator’s familiarity with feminist critiques of advertising. The
ad plays back to its knowledgeable postfeminist viewers the very concepts
they learned about in their women’s studies classes in college. Protesting
against the ad would be the dull, politically correct feminist response,
while the postfeminist response is a recognition of the ad as ironic.
McRobbie adds that such a reaction is also a signifier of generational
difference, the older feminists would be outraged, while “the younger
female viewer; along with her male counterparts, educated in irony and
visually literate, is not made angry by such a repertoire. She appreciates its
layers of meaning; she ‘gets the joke’” (33). This way feminism
dismantles itself as something outdated, lacking a sense of humor and
irony.
This specific strategy leads to what McRobbie calls the “ironic
normalization of pornography” (34), that is a situation in which women
consent to being perceived as sexual objects, all the while emphasizing the
role of their freedom of choice and the power they supposedly obtain from
flaunting their sexuality. McRobbie analyzes the proliferation of softpornographic images in contemporary visual culture from this perspective.
Women consent to their presence because objecting to them would mark
them as “uncool.” In this way postfeminism tricks women into surrendering
their subjecthood and allowing themselves to be objectified. Furthermore,
the very language of feminism, with words such as liberation and
empowerment, is made grotesque in its strictly sexual usage.4
To describe postfeminist ideology McRobbie also uses the term
“double entanglement” to signify the attempt to deal with, and normalize,
“the coexistence of neoconservative values in relation to gender, sexuality
and family life” with the ongoing “processes of liberalization in regard to
choice and diversity in domestic, sexual and kinship relations” (28). In
4
A similar argument is made by Ariel Levy in Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women
and the Rise of Raunch Culture.
8
Introduction
other words, postfeminism is the conservatives’ attempt to hold their
ground, while being aware that certain changes in the organization of
social relations are inevitable. However, “double entanglement” also
signifies that social theory cannot be created in a vacuum, that these
changes have to be “taken into account” if a theory is to be useful. The
very same term, that is “double entanglement,” could also be used to
describe how third wave feminism operates. On the one hand, it grows out
of the opposition to postfeminism as championed by the media in the early
1990s, but it is simultaneously a product of postfeminism, since all its
proponents are themselves products of the culture which created
postfeminism. Some ways in which third wave feminism replicates the
very discourse it tries to undermine will be analyzed in detail in Chapter II
and Chapter IV, but a brief look at the main theoretical differences
between postfeminism and the third wave is due in the introduction.
0.3. Postfeminism vs. the third wave
The third wave defines itself in opposition to the popular understanding of
postfeminism,5 that is through defining what it is not and why. The
primary difference, not surprisingly, emerges as the need for collective
action, required to secure the gains of feminism and to pursue new goals.
Postfeminism claims to be a description of the existing status quo. This
status quo is presented as an achievement in itself; one which should be
enjoyed and not challenged in any way. Therefore, postfeminism can in no
way be seen as a social movement, but only as a social theory. Alison
Piepmeier, best known as co-editor of Catching a Wave: Reclaiming
Feminism for the 21st Century, writes in an article contrasting postfeminism
and the third wave:
Postfeminism relies on competitive individualism and eschews collective
action; it obscures or makes invisible the many ways in which women are
often fearful, subjected to rape and other kinds of violence, and politically
and economically underprivileged. The third wave, however–in texts from
Third Wave Agenda to Manifesta to Colonize This!–grapples with
women's intersectional identities and demands an end to all the forms of
oppression that keep women from achieving their full humanity (Piepmeier
1).
5
and through links to and differences from the second wave of feminism, but those
differences will be examined in Chapters I and II.
Ungrateful Daughters: Third Wave Feminist Writings
9
Postfeminism puts emphasis on the individual and that individual’s
achievements. McRobbie calls this the process of female individualization.
The empowered and liberated individual, who is aware of the ideologies
surrounding her (and including feminism), is able and expected to make
decisions. As the strength of the social structures a woman is expected to
fill (marriage, childbearing, etc.) decreases, the capacity for personal
agency increases. Postfeminism presents collective agency as a thing of
the past, once necessary as a political strategy, but now obsolete and
certainly inferior to the strength of personal agency which one can
exercise in the postfeminist world. While the third wave, right from its
inception, heralds the need for collective action and rekindles the second
wave concept of sisterhood, though emphasizing community based on the
appreciation of difference rather than on the assumption of sameness, my
analysis of third wave texts presented in Chapter II reveals that the concept
of female individualization can easily be recognized in third wave
narratives.
A celebration of the individual and individual achievements leads to
the postfeminist fascination with consumption, which the third wave
strongly rejects. In postfeminism consumption becomes a measure of
one’s success and, simultaneously, a tool of empowerment. The successful
postfeminist woman can afford to buy expensive clothing and accessories
and uses this power to improve her mood and boost her self-confidence.
Postfeminist consumption is very much a tool of the capitalist economy,
but in a similar way in which postfeminist irony is a tool of the
conservative right. A postfeminist woman consumes in an ironic and
acutely conscious way; she is aware that the Wonderbra and high heels
may have once been signifiers of female oppression, but their signification
has now changed into that of status symbols, as a result of their
consumption by successful women. Third wave feminists challenge these
postfeminist ideas about consumption in several ways. Naomi Klein’s
book No Logo serves as an ideological framework for numerous third
wavers, whose agendas include the rejection of a globalized capitalist
economy through personal lifestyle decisions and collective action.
Klein’s book, considered a manifesto of the anti-globalization movement,
reveals how the choice available through consumption is in fact illusory.
Before Klein and the rise of the anti-globalization movement, the Riot
Grrrl movement, similarly to other youth countercultural movements,
openly rebelled against conspicuous consumption and capitalism through
ways of dressing and behaving, but also through the establishment of
alternative media, record distribution networks and the use of “do it
yourself” technologies.
10
Introduction
Ironically, many of the concepts of the Riot Grrrl movement, as
described in Chapter IV, were later taken over by mainstream popular
culture, commodified and sold under brand names–a key example being
the “grrrl power” slogan itself. Of course, the commodification of
rebellion is not exclusive to the third wave, but is a phenomenon affecting
practically all countercultural movements. What makes the rebellion
against consumption even more complicated in the case of the third wave
is the fact that numerous third wave feminists are actually proponents of
the postfeminist take on consumption. Naomi Wolf (whose ideas are
discussed in Chapter I) and Elizabeth Wurtzel openly embrace
consumption as an avenue for exercising choice, while rejecting the label
of postfeminists. In some ways their attitude towards consumption is a
reenactment of postfeminism’s strategy of “preemptive irony” as defined
by McRobbie. They seem to be saying: “Yes, I know it’s bad, but let’s not
be square, dull, boring.” The third wave, in its opposition to the second
wave’s perceived seriousness, wants to be seen as light-hearted, fun and
having a keen sense of humor.
Another similarity between postfeminism and the third wave is
preoccupation with youth. In postfeminist discourse this idea is realized
symbolically through the opposition of the “death of feminism” with the
vitality and exuberance of rediscovered femininity, but it is also obvious
on the literal level–postfeminism’s heroines, as described in articles in
popular magazines and presented in popular culture, are “vital, youthful
and playful” (Tasker and Negra 9). They are usually no older than in their
mid thirties and the older they are, the more attention they spend on
preserving their good looks. Postfeminism’s entanglement with
consumerism facilitates its obsession with the retention of youth; with
beauty, resulting from the ability of purchasing the right health care
products, being one of the signifiers of professional achievement. These
ideas are interestingly subverted by third wave writers originating from the
working class. For example, Michelle Tea, whose work is discussed in
Chapter IV, is utterly fascinated with bad teeth which, for her, function as
a badge of honor signifying working class origins.
However, the third wave is also young, almost by definition.
According to most classifications third wavers are usually women born
between 1961 and 1981, so the generation “easily collapsed into the larger
category of Generation X” (Henry 5). They often are, quite literally, the
daughters of second wave feminists (the relationship between the two
generations will be discussed in Chapter I) and their rebellion against the
second wave is often described with language usually reserved for
describing family relationships. The young daughters are, just like
Ungrateful Daughters: Third Wave Feminist Writings
11
postfeminist heroines, “vital, youthful and playful,” which gives them the
energy required for activism. However, along with the development and
aging of the third wave, a curious paradox can be observed. Due to the
classification of the third wave as “women under thirty”–which was
somewhat customary but also codified through some policies; for example,
the Third Wave Foundation only accepted members less than thirty years
of age–it theoretically becomes possible to “age out” of the third wave.
Alternately, women over thirty proclaim their affiliation with the third
wave as if it guaranteed eternal youth.
0.4. The case for third wave literature
While the very existence of the third wave of feminism, not to mention its
agenda and ideology, has been highly contested, there is no such
controversy regarding third wave literature. The reason is simple–there is
practically no scholarly debate on the topic. Even though there do exist
scholarly analyses of the works of individual writers I discuss in this book,
these names are hardly ever placed alongside each other and classified as
third wave literature or third wave fiction. One of the first scholars who
dared to put them together, Jennifer Drake, provides several reasons for
this lack of critical attention and media interest in the category of “third
wave literature.” In her entry on “Third Wave Fiction” included in Leslie
Heywood’s encyclopedia The Women’s Movement Today Drake explains
that the publishing industry views the label “third wave fiction” as a
marketing limitation, especially when contrasted to the highly popular
“emerging writers” category. In other words, it is easier to sell a book
marketed as ideologically neutral but with a defined target age group and
fitting into an existing marketing category. Obviously, since most of the
writers whose work could be marketed as third wave are still young and do
not have well-established reputations, they have not yet received full
critical attention.
The emergence of third wave writing has also, according to Drake,
coincided with the memoir boom of the late 20th and early 21st century,
thus books by many of the authors I write about here can be found in the
memoir section of bookstores, which, again, is a common-sense marketing
strategy aimed at increasing sales and broadening the possible target
group. The non-fictional anthologies discussed in Chapter II, which focus
on defining the goals of the movement and which offer short personal
narratives, have enjoyed relative success as college textbooks and trade
books. Drake defines third wave fiction as:
12
Introduction
writing that possesses or performs a third wave feminist sensibility in its
embrace of hybridity and contradiction over purity and either/or modes of
thinking. While third wave fiction is most often produced by emerging
generation X or generation Y writers, the work of some established writers
can be understood as prefiguring or participating in third wave literary
production. While third wave fiction takes on many forms and themes, two
major trends in third wave fiction may be delineated: postmodern
multicultural literature and punk postmodernism (Drake 145).
I kept this very broad definition in mind while making my choices of
texts for this book and trying to provide a representative selection of
authors. Being at liberty to make the choices myself, I decided not to
include authors who, although they exhibit what Drake refers to as “third
wave sensibility,” do not self-identify as “third wavers.” However, the
same strategy and Drake’s definition allowed me to include writers who
do not fit into the 1961-1981 age brackets, but who “can be understood as
prefiguring or participating in third wave literary production”–which
explains the presence of Dorothy Allison, a well established writer who,
however, often self-identifies as a third wave feminist. I treated actual
feminist activism as a bonus, bearing in mind the controversies
surrounding the definition of feminist literature in general. Therefore, I
assumed that if a writer self-identified as a third wave feminist and had
been involved in the movement, then definitely their work qualified as
material for my analysis.
Since such a huge volume of third wave writing is either non-fictional
or borders on non-fictional, I could not exclude some examples of
autobiographical writing. In the end, basically all of the works discussed
have some autobiographical content, which is proof to the strength of the
memoir boom which, in turn, is analyzed in Chapter II. The concept of
third wave theory, which I felt should be included in the book as a separate
chapter, also proved to be difficult because the third wave so strongly
opposes academic theory. Therefore, I finally settled on doing what most
instructors of women’s studies courses settle on when teaching about third
wave feminism, and analyzed (in Chapter II) the anthologies usually
marketed as college textbooks and containing mostly personal narratives
of feminist activists.
Of course, certain exclusions had to be made and this is why a general
overview of the writers whom I do not analyze in detail but who could be
classified as third wave is needed. Drake writes about two main trends
within third wave fiction, the first one being postmodern multicultural
literature, which according to Drake, begins with Edwidge Danticat’s
fictions, Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994), Krik? Krak! (1995), The Farming
Ungrateful Daughters: Third Wave Feminist Writings
13
of the Bones (1998), and Behind the Mountains (2002) and continues with
ZZ Packer’s Drinking Coffee Elsewhere (2003) and Gish Jen’s Mona in
the Promised Land (1996). As Drake writes, these writers “are in dialogue
with the work of established authors such as Toni Morrison, Bharati
Mukherjee, and Leslie Marmon Silko. Perhaps these three writers could be
called first sightings of the third wave in their insistence on exploring the
sometimes violent messiness of individual, communal, and national
identities in the context of globalization” (146).
Drake lists four distinct features of third wave multicultural literature:
“[f]irstly, third wave fiction often begins with the assumption that socalled marginal identities are normative, or, conversely, that the normative
is marginal” (146). Not only are third wave narrators simply representatives
of ethnic minorities, their identities are often much more complex, as will
be evident from my analysis of Walker and Senna’s works. This
complexity and marginality is for third wave writers something obvious, a
given, it does not require explanation. Secondly, “third wave fictions often
emphasize the humor in cultural hybridity and cross-cultural exchange”
(147). As examples of this sense of humor Drake lists Gish Jen’s and
Zadie Smith’s books. Thirdly, “characters in third wave fiction often resist
identity categories in favor of embracing the fluidity of identity” (147). I
examine this resistance of identity categories in Chapter III, analyzing the
concept of passing in Danzy Senna’s novel Caucasia and Rebecca
Walker’s memoir Black, White and Jewish. And lastly, “third wave fiction
writers engage popular culture critically and with pleasure” (147) just like
third wave feminism in general, third wave writers are highly literate in
popular culture.
Drake lists the other significant trend within third wave fiction as punk
postmodernism, which she defines as “autobiographical fictions […] set in
contemporary urban subcultures, usually lesbian, and [which] variously
explore sex, drugs, violence, music, low-wage work, gender identity,
travel, and friendship” (278). Representatives of this trend include Lynn
Breedlove with her novel Godspeed (2003) and the semi-autobiographical
works by Michelle Tea. Drake traces third wave punk fiction back to the
writings of Sarah Schulman (co-founder of the Lesbian Avengers), who
was in turn clearly inspired by the beatniks and whose stories are set
among New York City’s lesbian bohemia of the 1980s, and to Kathy
Acker’s Blood and Guts in High School (1984) and Don Quijote (1986). In
Chapter IV I analyze Michelle Tea’s Passionate Mistakes and Intricate
Corruption of One Girl in America and The Chelsea Whistle as inspired by
post-punk aesthetics and providing an insider’s view of late 1980s prethird wave feminist/queer communities.
14
Introduction
There are several writers whose work does not neatly fit into either one
of these categories, but who deserve to be mentioned as third wave writers
of fiction on the basis of their aesthetic sensibilities and ideology. Drake
lists Aimee Bender, an extremely talented short story author, as someone
who has a talent for “creating quirky and difficult characters and exploring
the nooks and crannies of contemporary life” (148) while avoiding
swerving too much in the direction of postfeminism. Aimee Bender has
published three short story collections: The Girl in the Flammable Skirt
(1998), An Invisible Sign of My Own (2001) and Willful Creatures (2005).
Drake also mentions “chick lit,” a hugely popular new literary
phenomenon, placing it on the border of postfeminism and the Third
Wave. I briefly look at chick lit, along with other new genres of popular
literature such as “hip-hop lit” in Chapter I, which analyzes the aesthetics
and politics of the third wave.
CHAPTER ONE
THE THIRD WAVE:
POLITICS OF STYLE,
AESTHETICS OF CONTRADICTION
1.0. Introduction
This chapter outlines the emergence of the third wave of feminism in the
United Stated and the various strands within it, in order to provide a
general view of how politics and aesthetics intermingle in third wave
discourse. In “U.S. Feminism-Grrrl Style! Youth Subcultures and the
Technologies of the Third Wave” Ednie Kaeh Garrison calls these strands
“nodes”1 (Garrison 151) arguing that this metaphor, taken over from the
world of computer technologies, where nodes are critical elements of a
system and points in a network where lines intersect or branch, better
reflects the technologics of the third wave. The various strands within
second wave feminism are usually presented in opposition to each other
and the language used to describe them encourages contrasting, thus
overviews of second wave feminism explain how radical feminism
differed from liberal feminism, etc. Added up, these strands form a selfcontained structure, described synchronically at a specific point in time. A
node is a connection point or a redistribution point, thus the term puts
emphasis on connectedness and cooperation rather than on divisions. It
also allows for a more diachronic description and for abandoning the idea
of a structure, in exchange for that of a network. Indeed, the nodes of third
wave feminism do not simply add up to form a complete picture of the
movement, but often overlap and interconnect. Hip-hop feminism is
predominantly an African American phenomenon, while the Riot Grrrl
was overwhelmingly white, but the node metaphor makes it easier to see
how they both draw inspiration from the same source: popular music (hip1
Full quotation from Garrison: “I want to argue that this ‘movement’ called the
Third Wave is a network built on specific technologics, and Riot Grrrl is one node,
or series of nodes, that marks points of networking or clustering” (151).
16
Chapter One
hop and punk, respectively). This chapter will also briefly describe the
popular literary genres which are in some way connected to third wave
feminism.
1.1. The emergence of third wave feminism
Third wave feminism, despite its relatively young age, already has an
extensive historiography with several different “emergence narratives.”2
These stories of how the third wave came into existence differ with
regards to which event they view as the founding moment of the third
wave, yet what they all share is a narrative structure which assumes a
waning of interest in feminism throughout the 1980s and what can be
defined as an explosion of writings about feminism and feminist activism
in the 1990s. While this structure itself can be easily problematized, the
persistence of the re-birth metaphor deserves to be analyzed as do the
choices of the founding moments.3
However, it should be mentioned as a word of caution, that it is
impossible to look at the third wave purely in terms of chronological
developments. Firstly, the third wave is not and has never been a
monolithic construct in terms of a main political or ideological “party
2
Historical accounts of third wave feminism include the Introduction to The
Women’s Movement Today, an Encyclopedia of Third Wave Feminism, edited by
Leslie Heywood, Chapter I “Daughterhood is Powerful” of Astrid Henry’s Not My
Mother’s Sister and Chapter II, “What is Feminism?” in Amy Richards and
Jennifer Baumgardner’s Manifesta.
3
In Not My Mother’s Sister Astrid Henry quotes a New York Times article
“Coming of Age, Seeking an Identity” dated March 8, 2000 according to which
more women identified as feminists in the 1980s than in the 1990s. Henry also
writes that “the notion that the 1980s can be dismissed as a post-feminist decade is,
in great part, a fiction that has helped to propagate the conservatives’ view of
feminism” (Henry 21). The late 1970s and early 1980s were a period of the
infamous sex wars (see: Lisa Duggan and Nan D. Hunter. Sex Wars: Sexual
Dissent and Political Culture, New York: Routledge, 1995 and Emma Healey,
Lesbian Sex Wars, London: Virago, 1995), but the 1980s were also a decade of the
solidification of Women’s/Gender Studies in academia and a period when some of
the most important feminist theory was published, for example, Judith Butler’s
Gender Trouble. The metaphor of “rebirth” requires the preceding “death” of
feminism, always eagerly announced by the media (Baumgardner and Richards in
Manifesta quote Erica Jong’s calculations according to which the media announced
the death of feminism a staggering 169 times since 1969). The 1980s function as a
decade of the “death of feminism” both in feminist historiography relying on the
wave metaphor and in popular sources.
The Third Wave: Politics of Style, Aesthetics of Contradiction
17
line”. In this way the third wave is similar–and of course based on–the
various ideological strands within the second wave, which included the
liberal feminism of Betty Friedan and the radical anti-establishment ideas
of Valerie Solanas. Secondly, and even more importantly, the third wave is
composed of multiple aesthetic nodes, originating within various aspects
of American pop culture, which have existed and still exist alongside one
another, evolving internally, but not necessarily transforming from one
into another. Arguably, the two pop cultural communities which have been
the most influential for third wave feminism have been hip-hop and punk.
Nonetheless, several “historic moments” are described as key events,
or key publications, for third wave feminism, each one pointing to what
later became an important issue on the agenda of third wave feminism. I
would like to discuss the “primary documents” anthologized in the second
volume of Leslie Heywood’s The Women’s Movement Today: An
Encyclopedia of Third Wave Feminism. The publication, even through its
name, assumes an aura of authority. Therefore, the history it narrates can
be called an almost “official” history of the third wave. As in any thematic
anthology, the editor-historian’s choices are most certainly based on the
desire to draw the most representative picture of the movement possible.
Yet, as anyone familiar with Hayden White’s work on metahistory and the
concept of emplotment knows, such a goal necessarily entails selectivity–it
is worthwhile to compare which of the feminist publishing boom
publications of the early nineties made it into the Encyclopedia and which
ones did not, in order to decipher what kind of story “alternative” history
can be created from the publications which were omitted.
Heywood and Drake track down one of the earliest uses of the term
third wave in the title of an anthology of writings about racism, The Third
Wave: Feminist Perspectives on Racism (Heywood and Drake 1), which
had been stalled in publication due to financial problems of its
independent publisher.4 However, the two women who were instrumental
in bringing the term to public attention, although their visions of what
third wave feminism should be like differed substantially, were Rebecca
Walker, an activist and author whose work I analyze in Chapter III of this
book, and Naomi Wolf, another popular and prolific writer. Both Walker’s
and Wolf’s writings from the “emergence period” of the third wave, which
4
The book was due to be published in 1991 by Kitchen Table, Women of Color
Press, but, in the end, was released in 1998. It is also important to note that Astrid
Henry records the first use of the term “third wave” in a 1987 article “Second
Thoughts on the Second Wave” by Deborah Rosenfelt and Judith Stacey.
However, as Henry notes, in the 1987 article the term is not used with a
generational meaning (Henry 23).
18
Chapter One
I roughly define as 1991-1995, that is before the publication of the first
third wave anthologies, are included in Heywood’s encyclopedia. 5
In a 1992 essay in Ms. magazine titled “Becoming the Third Wave,”
Walker expressed her outrage at the Senate Judiciary Committee’s
response to Anita Hill’s testimony during the hearings preceding Clarence
Thomas’s appointment to the Supreme Court. 6 In 1991, Thomas was to
become the second African American Supreme Court justice. At that time
Anita Hill, a professor at the University of Oklahoma and Thomas’s
former colleague, accused Thomas of past sexual harassment.7 After the
Committee reluctantly held formal hearings, the US Senate chose to
believe Thomas, discrediting Hill’s testimony.
The case began to be viewed as a confrontation between women’s
rights and the political gains of the African American community. Hill,
also an African American, was viewed by many as a race traitor trying to
obstruct Thomas’s political career for personal reasons. Walker, then
twenty-two years of age, was outraged that such accusations were meted
against a woman who had been a victim of sexual harassment. In her Ms.
article she claimed the hearings were not meant to establish Thomas’s
guilt or innocence. They turned into a spectacle of public humiliation
which Hill was forced to engage in, and became a lesson about “checking
and redefining the extent of women’s credibility and power” (Walker in
Heywood 3). Walker explains how the experience of watching Hill’s
hearings helped her understand that “the fight is far from over” (5) and
issues a plea to “all women, especially women of my generation” to join
her in the fight. She ends the article with the statement “I am not a
postfeminist feminist. I am the Third Wave,” which marks the first
occurrence of the term “third wave” in a popular publication.
What makes Walker’s essay and the ill-fated Third Wave Perspectives
on Racism anthology significant as founding documents of third wave
feminism is the foregrounding of racial issues as central to the new
generation of feminists. The absence of African American theorists and
activists from the second wave of American feminism is a frequent
5
The second chapter of this book is devoted exclusively to third wave anthologies
published in the period 1996-2006.
6
Walker’s article was originally published in Ms. Jan/Feb 1992 and later reprinted
several times in various publications.
7
Anita Hill published an account of her story in 1998 in book form - Speaking
Truth to Power, New York: Anchor Books. Her testimony is included in Miriam
Schneir’s Feminism In Our Time: The Essential Historical Writings, World War II
to the Present. New York: Vintage, 1994. 469-477.
The Third Wave: Politics of Style, Aesthetics of Contradiction
19
complaint voiced by numerous third wavers,8 although there have been
critical voices, such as Kimberly Springer’s 2002 Signs article “Third
Wave Black Feminism?”, which claim that this absence has been
fabricated by the wave structure itself.9 Nonetheless, situating an article by
biracial Walker about the Anita Hill case as the historic emergence of the
third wave is a significant gesture. Walker is a young black woman
speaking about the intersections of race and gender, thus her piece signals
both a generational shift and the changes in feminist leadership and agenda
that this shift signifies. While the article discusses a case dealing with the
intersections of race and gender, its strength as a founding document of
third wave feminism lies also in the multiple intersections in the identity of
its author. Walker is biracial and bisexual10–thus she herself embodies the
trademark hybridity of the third wave, which as Jennifer Drake writes,
“operates both as a metaphor for understanding the complexity of
contemporary experience and as a lived reality” (Drake in Heywood 179).
Furthermore, the fact that her mother, Alice Walker, was a well known
feminist herself, serves as a similar real life embodiment of the metaphor
of feminist generations. Who could possibly be more suited to being the
icon of third wave feminism?
Although Walker represents the positive, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic,
aspect of the third wave, the rhetoric she uses in the Ms. article foreshadows
some aspects of the third wave which are somewhat problematic for the
movement’s political efficacy. Astrid Henry notices that the third wave
feminists’ extreme individualism can be recognized in Walker’s article.
Henry writes: “Walker does not speak in a collective voice. There is no
‘we’ in this statement, just an ‘I’” (Henry 43). Henry’s observation points
to the first of many contradictions inherent in third wave feminism–the
tension between the third wave all-inclusiveness and emphasis on, to quote
the title of an essay by Linda Alcoff, “the problem of speaking for others.”
Third wave writers feel the need for sisterhood rooted in collectiveness–
both as a personal longing, or third wave melancholia, and as an effective
8
I address this accusation in several sections of this chapter.
Springer argues that the definition of the (all white) women’s suffrage movement
as the first wave of feminism forces an automatic comparison of any type of later
feminist activity with the white suffrage movement. At the same time this concept
of the first wave obscures the involvement of African American women in their
struggles for rights as women. Springer’s article, originally published in Signs 27.4
(2002), is anthologized in Heywood’s The Women’s Movement Today, 33-46.
10
However, in “Becoming the Third Wave” Walker does not mention her mixed
racial heritage or her bisexuality. The figure of Rebecca Walker will be discussed
in detail in Chapter III, which analyzes her memoir Black, White and Jewish.
9
20
Chapter One
political strategy, but it often seems they are unable to fulfill this need.
This contradiction is developed further in Chapter II, which analyzes the
discourse of third wave anthologies.
Returning to the “myth of origin” of third wave feminism, the
placement of Walker’s article as the opening of the third wave by
Heywood is not necessarily justified by historical circumstances. There
were numerous other texts, often full-length books as opposed to Walker’s
short article, appearing at more or less the same time, which also used the
term third wave, also signaled the coming of age of a new generation of
feminists and which generated a much greater media stir than a short piece
in Ms. I am referring, specifically, to two books by Naomi Wolf: The
Beauty Myth and Fire with Fire. Rene Denfield’s The New Victorians, a
case against the anti-pornography feminists of the 1980s which, for
Denfield, symbolized the entire second wave, and Katie Roiphe’s The
Morning After are two more books published in the early nineties, which,
although written from a feminist perspective–the authors self-identified as
feminists–were meant to attack the “old ways” of feminist thinking.
Wolf, who it should be added was actually a short-lived media
celebrity and hailed as the next Gloria Steinem, published several books,
served as Bill Clinton’s campaign advisor and then reappeared on the
public scene in 2004 when she accused her former Yale professor Harold
Bloom of “sexual misconduct”–an accusation with a striking and strange
resemblance to the Hill/Thomas harassment case. Yet, Heywood includes
only a short piece from her book Fire with Fire, with the stipulation that it
is a “controversial” text. Rene Denfield is omitted altogether, although her
“pro-sex” attitude has become a trademark of third wave sensibility and is
represented in the Encyclopedia by several essays from Lisa Jervis’s
anthology Jane Sexes it Up. What Wolf, Denfield and Roiphe share is
certainly skin color, class affiliation and sexual orientation. They are all
very white, very middle class (verging on upper middle class), very
educated and very heterosexual. In many situations this must have
certainly been an advantage, but in this one the combination of these
factors may have contributed to their omission from the annals of third
wave history.
The racial and cultural diversity of the movement is embraced by all
and strongly emphasized by white third wavers, who not only seem
genuinely proud of the inclusive character of the third wave, but also
repeatedly refuse to take-on leadership roles which the media attempt to
impose on them. Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, authors of
Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future (2000) a book which
became hugely successful as a long-awaited and unique compilation of the
The Third Wave: Politics of Style, Aesthetics of Contradiction
21
goals of the third wave, co-authored an essay titled “Who’s the Next
Gloria?” (published in Piepmeier and Dicker’s Catching a Wave) in which
they criticize the idea of designating individual leaders of the movement as
an outdated concept. The article was written after the success of Manifesta
had launched the two white, Manhattan-based, fashion-savvy writers into
national fame as “the next Glorias.”11
I am not implying that in reality there are no non-Caucasian third
wavers, that would be a radical untruth,12 but that curiously third wave
discourse produced by white, educated, middle class third wavers is
structured in such a way as to emphasize, or maybe even overemphasize,
the role of non-Caucasians and disadvantaged groups. The third wave as
11
There do exist critiques of the whiteness of the third wave posed from within the
movement. In general, most of the “ethnic” anthologies which will be analyzed in
Chapter II express this sentiment. There even exists a text which directly criticizes
Manifesta as an exclusionary text. In “Heartbroken: Women of Color Feminism
and the Third Wave” Rebecca Hurdis, who identifies as “an adopted woman of
color feminist” expresses her heartbreak over the fact that influential women of
color feminist theorists are not listed as influences in Baumgardner and Richards’s
book. She does, however, overlook the fact that Manifesta’s main goal is, as the
authors claim, pulling feminism away from the academia and back into the sphere
of activism. Thus, basically all important theorists are omitted–not just Gloria
Anzaldua and Cherrie Moraga, but Judith Butler as well. Interestingly, there never
appeared an official “white” response to this text. In fact, there has never appeared
a text written by a white third waver, which would directly confront such
accusations. Hurdis’s text was, however, included in Heywood’s Encyclopedia,
most likely to emphasize the variety of voices and positions within the third wave.
In Chapter II of this book I make the argument that third wave texts do not engage
in a real dialogue with each other, indeed they may present conflicting positions,
but the conflicts are rarely worked through. I think the story of Hurdis’s text is an
excellent example of how this mechanism functions. The critique is never
addressed directly and analyzed, but incorporated into mainstream thought through
anthologizing in an important publication.
12
At this point, it is vital to emphasize the leadership role of African American and
multiracial women like Walker in the Third Wave, both as activists and as key
thinkers. In addition to Walker’s 1992 article, her 1995 anthology To Be Real:
Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism and her 2001 memoir Black
White and Jewish: Memoir of a Shifting Self, other important third wave texts
published by African American and multiracial women include a collection of
essays Bulletproof Diva: Tales of Race Sex and Hair (1994) by Lisa Jones,
daughter of Jewish-American writer Hettie Jones and African American poet and
activist Amiri Baraka; the autobiography/feminist manifesto When Chickenheads
Come Home to Roost (1999) by Joan Morgan, and several memoirs and works of
fiction, for example, Veronica Chambers’s memoir Mama’s Girl (1994) and Danzy
Senna’s novel Caucasia.
22
Chapter One
presented in the major anthologies edited by third wavers, and all the
editors but Walker have so far been white, is a lot less white than it would
seem from the examination of the third wave’s early history. This
phenomenon can be seen as an internalized form of political correctness,
but that term already connotes something negative, while it seems that the
need to create an inclusive movement, even if it means underplaying one’s
role in it, is a genuine need of the white third wavers.
Furthermore, as Astrid Henry notices, while a lot of mainstream
second wave ideas are scorned as racist and classist, the theory produced
by second wave women of color is foundational for third wave feminism.
This fascination especially with African American thought and culture
expressed by white Americans is of course not limited to third wave
feminists, but can be viewed as part of a larger phenomenon which Cornel
West describes as the “Afro-Americanization” of American popular
culture.13 This shorthand phrase refers to the fascination with African
American culture, especially in the realms of sport and music, and does
make sense when one bears in mind that even white third wavers have
grown up listening to hip-hop and cheering for Michael Jordan.
Yet, Henry claims that the phenomenon is much deeper. Her overall
argument in Not My Mother’s Sister is that the emergence of the third
wave of feminism required the symbolic matricide of the second wave.
This differed significantly from the relationship between the first- and
second wavers, for whom the passage of several decades created a
situation in which the first-wavers were literally dead by the time the
second wave emerged. The passage of time created a relaxed situation in
which second wavers could acknowledge their debt to “the great
foremothers” without the need to engage in dialogue with them.
Meanwhile, second wavers often are the actual mothers of third wavers,
13
West talks about this phenomenon in multiple essays and book chapters, most
significantly in Race Matters. The phrase refers to the disproportionately large
presence of African Americans (mostly males) in popular music and athletics.
West notices that even though this presence will not force young white consumers
of popular culture to question their preconceived notions of race, it does create “a
shared cultural space where some humane interaction takes place” (Race Matters
84). This fascination with black athletes and rappers among white suburban
teenagers leads to the imitation of black styles of dressing, behavior in speech.
Cornel West notices the ironic character of this phenomenon: “just as young black
men are murdered, maimed and imprisoned in record numbers, their styles have
become disproportionately influential in shaping popular culture” (RM 88). For a
discussion of the African-Americanization of popular music see, for example, “On
Afro-American Music: From Bebop to Rap,” originally published in Semiotexte in
1982.
The Third Wave: Politics of Style, Aesthetics of Contradiction
23
which results in the psychologically grounded need to rebel from the
preceding generation, as described in Harold Bloom’s Anxiety of
Influence. Yet, at the same time the need for role models and influential
ideas is also a psychological reality. Henry claims that this internally
contradictory need is solved by the simultaneous portrayal of second wave
feminism “with a capital F” as exclusionary and white, as the mother
which they need to kill, and the acknowledgment of the third wave’s
influence by texts written by women of color (favorite theorists include:
Gloria Anzaldua, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Cherrie Moraga, Barbara
Smith), without acknowledging them as part of the second wave. Henry
claims that “in order to argue for a new, ‘real’ feminism, young feminists
need and old, out-of-touch feminism to whom they can shout ‘get real’”
(Henry 166). This, in turn, results in a paradoxical situation in which the
third wave becomes responsible for perpetuating the perception of the
second wave as a white monolith.
Additionally, the history of race relations in the US complicates things
even further. Henry argues that “feminism’s ‘whiteness’ is intrinsic to its
caricaturization as a puritanical mother. Third wavers describe this
maternal feminism as prudish, embittered, and moralistic in a way that is
clearly indebted to stereotypes of a certain form of uptight, white
femininity” (167). I will discuss these stereotypes of the second wave in
more detail when I examine the accusations meted out by the third wave
against the second wave, but Henry’s observation of the “intrinsic”
whiteness of the second wave leads to an interesting reworking of the
familial metaphors of feminism. As Henry notices, after Ann DuCille’s
article “The Occult of True Black Womanhood,” in this metaphoric
relationship black second wave feminism becomes the third wave’s
“mammy,” while white second wave feminism is still its mother. Henry
explains that “DuCille uses the mammy metaphor to critique what she sees
as white feminists’ cooption and fetishization of their relationship to black
feminists” (168). This also explains why black (and women of color)
feminist thought can never be seen as a part of the second wave–that
would put it in the position of the despised mother.
Although Henry does not write about this, the use of these familial
metaphors accounts for, or questions, depending on which attitude one
assumes, the position of women of color within the third wave. The
“daughter-bad white mother-good black mammy” relationship, apart from
the fetishization and cooption of black feminism, assumes that, unless
miscegenation took place, the child has to be white. Thus, while bleaching
the second wave of any pigmentation, it also bleaches the third wave. This
would explain the burning need to include feminists of color in the third
24
Chapter One
wave expressed by white third wavers as an unconscious attempt to deny
the existence of the mother/mammy division. At the same time it would
also explain the reluctance of feminists of color to identify as third wave
as unconscious (or perhaps conscious?) recognition of the existence of this
familial triangle and their fear of being used. I have, however, noted that
the presence of women of color activists and theorists within the third
wave is a fact, which would seem to counter the claim that I have just
made. Yet, with the exception of Walker, basically all minority women
within the third wave tend to present themselves in ways which emphasize
the complexity of their identities, not simply as third wavers. Rebecca
Hurdis identifies as “adopted-Asian-American-woman-of-color-feminist.”
One of the root causes of such hyphenated identities is the perception of
“the movement” as white, which results in the need to emphasize one’s
non-whiteness.
1.2. The conservative trio: Roiphe, Denfield, Wolf
Returning to the official history of the third wave, another early (1993)
text represented in most, though not all, accounts of the history of the third
wave is Naomi Wolf’s Fire with Fire: The New Female Power and How It
Will Change the 21st Century. Wolf’s first book, The Beauty Myth: How
Images of Beauty Are Used against Women, published two years earlier,14
garnered even more popular media attention. It was rather immodestly
praised by Germaine Greer, the author of The Female Eunuch, as “[t]he
most important feminist publication since The Female Eunuch.”15
Australian-born Greer is known as the “sexy” feminist, with the main idea
of The Female Eunuch being that contemporary society has made women
feel ashamed about their bodies, which results in decreasing their sense of
self-worth and thus their autonomy. The solution is free sexual
experimentation and denouncing monogamy.
At the time of the publication of Wolf’s first two books–she has
published several more since that time–her classification as a feminist
writer was questionable. In their 1996 Third Wave Agenda: Being
Feminist, Doing Feminism, Heywood and Drake dismiss Wolf as postfeminist, along with Christina Hoff Summers and Katie Roiphe (Heywood
14
The first US edition was published in 1991, the original edition was published in
Canada in 1990.
15
On the book jacket of the Canadian 1990 edition. Interestingly, The Female
Eunuch was reissued in 2002. The reissuing of the book was initiated by Jennifer
Baumgardner, who also wrote the foreword to the 2002 edition. In other words,
Germaine Greer certainly is the third wave’s favorite second wave feminist.