Third Wave Feminism?

I was wondering, how many people here identify as thrid-wave feminists?

I do feel a little out of place here, as well as in the feminists group, to be perfectly honest. Not that I don't like anyone, I just have a hard time finding eople whose values match up with my own.

Although, yes, I do think there are problems with the mainstream porn industry, I'm still pretty sex-positive. I don't believe in demonizing sexual relationships between consenting adults (or consenting teenagers for that matter.)

I don't particularly like it when people talk crap about sex workers. I don't support exclusion of transgender people from women's spaces. (I'm not saying any of you do these things, by the way. I'm just making a point.) I believe there are more important feminist issues than "Young girls are dressing too provacatively these days." I wear jeans and t-shirts most days, but if I want to wear a miniskirt, isn't that my choice? Don't women have the right to do what they want with their own bodies.

I hope nobody jumps on me for this. It isn't flamebait, I'm just feeling rather disenchanted right now.

"Don't women have the right to do what they want with their own bodies. I hope nobody jumps on me for this."

Just the way those two statements follow each other is gentle and vulnerable. When you mention a woman's right to do what she wants with her own body, you talk about how women dress and not about a right to abortion.

I mean that's fine, that's your style, but is this part of the new third-wave feminism? Are you polite and careful by nature or is this part of the new movement?

I'm a plain old feminist and I just never could do polite and gentle. I've pissed off more people than you can imagine, so your style may have its merits.

This is the way I put it - Hell yes, women have a right to their own bodies whether they express it in their dress or in their decisions to have children. It is your own body no matter what a man would like you to believe.

If you can't express yourself and your feelings and your doubts
on DU - you can't anywhere!

Your feminist beliefs are on the right track; they will solidify
as you grow older. (just wait)
First a qualifier.
I am a 52 year old woman and was there for the ERA.
Times are better for women now, but I have seen "backsliding"
feminists about younger women and the barely there clothes issue.
Yes, you have the right to wear whatever you want.

I think what I object to; as far as the barely there clothes issue is
that when I see young women at the mall or at a concert and they ALL have the same hair, same makeup,same clothes, same speech that it
gets under my skin. I think that women today go against what
women my age fought for. which was NOT to be seen as all the same.
that women should not be seen as sex objects. they we are not just
something to be dismissed as vapid air heads.
That women are all different and have different opinions.

....violence, abuse, sex discrimination (YES it still happens all the time and it has NOT improved), legal, social, professional, economic inequality, etc. etc. What our male-dominated society and government 'teach' girls (covertly or overtly) is part of the problem. It's SO much larger than clothing.

Go into a technical mailing list with a female name and post something - ask a technical question, see what happens to you (you'll be ignored or lambasted as an idiot one or the other). Or go online anywhere, messageboard, chatroom, with a female name. I dare men to do that all the time.

It's a bigger problem and it's NOT better than it was back in ERA days. It's because girls/young women don't realize what they DIDN'T have before that (they weren't there) and they aren't noticing and fighting to keep those rights we did gain or to secure the other basic human rights women are entitled to. I think too many don't grasp what it would mean to have to fight those battles again and how precarious they are, esp with a woman-hating mysogenist gov't in power.

Clothes? Well...that's the least of our problems.

your values and mine aren't quite the same.

"Although, yes, I do think there are problems with the mainstream porn industry, I'm still pretty sex-positive."

This implies to me that you are equating pro-porn with sex-positive, and anti-porn with "sex-negative." Personally I think that's like "pro-life" - implying that the pro-choicers are "anti-life." So I have some grief with that premise, as you stated it.

I'm in a town that's been rocked consistently with arrests from a large human trafficking ring that was running a number of strip clubs - where the so-called "sex positive" boyz were having a grand ole time getting off watching the sex slaves. I don't need to be positive about that. That's exploitation, not sex. And it's not demonizing sex workers; it's demonizing those who purchase access to women's bodies as if we are cattle to be bought and sold. And I oppose hate speech in general, much of which is embodied in mainstream porn.

I don't know any of the women here that I'd consider feminists that have a problem with you wearing a miniskirt. On DU in general, though, any woman in public wearing a miniskirt, heels, or their breasts will be called a slut or a whore. Usually you will find it's the regulars here in this group smacking down those people for making that kind of comment.

However, that definitely does not make you popular here.

who work in the sex industry, not all of whom are abused children being abused again by Svengali-like pornmeisters.

Like it or not, some women have chosen to do this work, especially when it comes to the choice between graduating college with tens of thousands of dollars in debt or graduating with money in the bank.

I never had the stomach for it myself, but I can't dis my sisters who do.

that makes women chose between stripping and debt?

but I've listened to some of these women. They get a real charge out of what they're doing. They enjoy the work.

There will always be sex workers while there is a market for them, and unless we eliminate the male sex and doom ourselves to extinction in the process, we might as well embrace our sisters in that business.

the sex industry in and of itself. I have nothing but love for the women in it. But it's a bit much to ask me to approve of an industry that makes it's money perpetuating the idea that women's bodies are commodities and that serves to maintain the patriarchal status quo.

I don't talk crap about sex workers. I've worked with them. Still do. I want prostitution decriminalized and tricks thrown in jail. I object to glamorizing an industry like porn that is corrupt and exploitative. I hate being bullshitted about it as well, although there is only so much personal information I'm going give over the internet--and I put out my share-- you can take my word for it if you like. Or not. I know about the goddam sex industry.


I don't want a fucked up cooperate fascist system run by white males telling me what to wear either. Or what's sexy, or what sex acts I should be getting off on. Or where I should be on a self esteem scale solely by what I look like and solely because I'm female. Bullshit, bullshit bullshit. Man, I love my body and I love my radical self. No matter what I have, or don't have on.

That being said, some of the younger "third wave" feminists have great books out, that aren't that far off from "first wave". I started out considering myself merely a liberal all purpose feminist, and found I fit a radical criteria. Imagine my surprise.

I would love to call bullshit on divisive feminism in the first place, but I understand generations grow into their own conclusions, and I also understand how, say, Germaine Greer might be too much to take for some.

Please, please Understand that Andrea Dworkin was a voice screaming in the wilderness, in the most hostile environment possible and no matter where you land in your feminist soul, take some time to read her work, and look at the context. Not to agree necessarily, although you might be surprised, but to to look at radical beginnings. The whys and hows of radical feminism. She is continually misquoted and demonized, and I resent the hell out of that.


Feminism to me is about the female soul, spirit, psyche, condition, whatever you want to call it. It's about women having no rights for most of human history, when sex work was the ONLY option for some besides marriage or religion, how strong women, angry women, religious women, (I admire Margaret Fell) atheist women, damaged women, women of color, stood up and said no more. Like any fight, some of them died, some of them gave up or gave in, some of them we never heard of, some of them became famous, all of them made a difference. To me, no matter what my opinions are, I still have work to do as long as women have their human rights threatened, and are told what to do and be by manipulative patriarchal assholes.

We don't have to agree. Hang out here, hang out in the feminist forum, speak your piece. I'll listen if you like. So will others. Welcome.