"Waves" of Feminism

The following lengthy discussion focuses at the start on the book
_Jane Sexes It Up: True Confessions of Feminist Desire_.  Gradually,
the discussion considers as well the issue of "waves" of feminism,
especially the definition of and differences between second and
third wave feminism.  The discussion took place on WMST-L in
May/June 2002, with a few later messages in 2002 and 2003
(including a short third wave bibliography). See also an earlier
discussion (July 2001) entitled Teaching 70s Feminism.
For additional WMST-L discussions now on the Web, see the
WMST-L File Collection.

PART 1 OF 5

Dear Colleagues: I hope this isn't an inappropriate use of the listserv, but I
wanted first to thank those who responded to my query several months ago about
finding a job as a women's-studies-oriented academic and to let you know I did
finally land one at Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory, NC. It's a two-year gig
doing composition and special topics in women's writing. The second element of
my post today is regarding _Jane Sexes It Up: True Confessions of Feminist
Desire_, a book this listserv has seen develop from abstracts to amazon.com
and beyond. (All faculty who requested a desk copy should have received theirs
by now, by the way.) My question is about (feminist) publicity. Having
published with a small press, I find I must do much of the publicity work
myself. I did have a producer from "Oprah" call but was ultimately passed over
as a guest because (I conjecture) I wouldn't engage their preferred pattern of
young feminists "dissing" older feminists. Last week I did a phone interview
on a Pacifica radio station in California. Anyway, my question today is
two-fold:

1. Does anyone know of appropriate conferences, writer's series, or other
venues for me to contact in pursuit of (preferably paying) speaking gigs?

2. Do you have advice on doing one's own publicity work as a women's studies
scholar and feminist writer?

The first question should be responded to privately at lj30108    AT    mindspring.com,
but the second question may be of interest to the listserv at large.

Thanks for your time-
Lisa Johnson

See reviews of _Jane Sexes It Up_ at
http://www.westga.edu/~ljohnson/janepress.html

Dear Lisa,

I have your book, Jane Sexes it Up, and will probably review it at some
point as part of a critique of the 'new feminism'.

I should note at this point that back in the 1920s in the Women's Leader in
UK a wonderful feminist does a critique of what was said to be the new
feminism of that time. She says that talking about an old and new feminism
is about as meaningful as talking about a new and old slavery, i.e. slavery
of women is still there and feminism is needed to fight it, the idea of a
new feminism does not make sense. That is in my book Spinster and Her
Enemies. The new feminism of the time was about women being good mothers.
These days new feminism is about women being 'sexy' as well as getting
nicely married. Yes, in the book there is a piece by a woman on getting
married and her wedding shower and how transgressive this now is just after
a piece on lesbian sadomasochism which is particularly nasty by Shannon
Bell. So nowadays transgression, in other words trying to shock and
overturn feminism, is the key but marriage and SM are equally
transgressive. What is all this about? Yes it all attacks feminist ideas
about marriage and the sexuality of inequality but it is a very strange
union. Maybe it shows that SM and marriage have more in common than even
the most extreme radical feminist has previously dared voice.

The sexual aggression that het women celebrate in the book does suggest
that the practices of the lesbian sex industry and lesbian sadomasochism
are now being taken up by heterosexual women. I don't think this is progress.

Something I find difficult in the book is the aggression expressed towards
supposed anti-sex feminism. For instance in the introduction you write:

'When I first imagined this project I thought that in writing it I would
force feminism's legs apart like a rude lover, liberating her from the
beige suit of political correctness.'

I was completely thrown by the sexual aggression towards feminists here.
Very different from the womanloving and respect for women that is basic to
my feminism. You do say that you then realised that sexless feminism was a
media beatup. But wanting to be that sexually aggressive to women at all is
the problem. You say you want to get married too, of course.

In your chapter you say admiring things about Andrea Dworkin and me and
that we are bad-asses. (I like donkeys too but I do not think this is what
is meant). I do not consider myself a bad-ass at all in fact. I don't see
it as a womancentred term. You say you accept our analysis but it makes
heterosexuality too hard and we give no answers so you have to reject us in
the end.

In another chapter in the book the writer expressed the desire to rape
feminism so this is clearly something common to the new 'sexy' feminism.

In a chapter by a dildo manufacturer I am called 'one of lesbian feminism's
most prominent antidildo crusaders' which is accurate but a narrow view of
my work.

The new 'sexy' feminism in the book is mostly sex industry. One chapter
talks of how man/woman is no longer sexy, it has to be man/girl now and
even heterosexuals must wield dildos because they are important to this new
sexiness. So eroticised power difference is the foundation of this
sexiness, something that feminists like myself have found very problematic.

Looks like I almost wrote my review.

Sheila J.

I have to say that I find these kinds of personal attacks and baiting very
depressing on a feminist listserv.
Jessica Nathanson

I do not consider reviewing or critiquing a book a personal attack or
baiting someone. Further, personally knowing Sheila Jeffreys, I can
certainly assert that "bad-ass" is a completely inappropriate description
of her personally, her politics and her academic work. Loni Bramson

Dear Jessica and other women,

what I find depressing is the kind of uncritical celebration of
sexuality in whatever form which sometimes is passed off as feminist
scholarship, not Professor Jeffreys' critique of it.
What is 'feminist' about work which celebrates marriage, SM and rape?
Scholars like Ludmilla Jordanova and Geneveive Lloyd have critiqued
masculinist scientists like Bacon and Descartes for the sexual aggression
inherent in their thinking - 'forcing feminism's legs apart' is
reminiscent of such Enlightenment misogyny.

I think it is vitally important that these views be critiqued and of
relevance to the list. How, for example, would an advocate of this 'new
feminism' critique sex slavery and domestic violence? Isn't feminism based
on a critique of hierarchy and power? How can someone who celebrates
hierarchy critique it?

I think there have been examples of personal attacks on this list but
Jeffreys' was not one of them - she critiqued the book in very direct
terms but made no 'personal' attacks at all. I'm not sure what you were
referring to.

-----
Heather Benbow
Department of German and Swedish Studies
University of Melbourne VIC 3010
Australia
Ph: +61 3 8344 5202
Fax: +61 3 8344 7821

I've replied below, after each of two quotes.

--- Loni Bramson <loni.bramson    AT    VERIZON.NET> wrote:
> I do not consider reviewing or critiquing a book a personal attack or
> baiting someone.

Neither do I, but what Jeffreys posted was neither a review nor a
critique.  Reviews generally provide enough information so that the reader
is familiar with the context in which an argument is made; critiques are
only useful if they thoughtfully reflect upon and/or refute an argument.
It was clear from Jeffreys' post that there are some real problems with
some of the arguments made in _Jane Sexes It Up_, and I have no problem
with a thoughtful discussion of these.  What bothered me was that Jeffreys
essentially wrote a private email to the editor in which she was extremely
condescending and did not bother to present her arguments fully or well,
and then sent what was written in the tone of a private communique to a
listserv (in response to the editor's request for something else entirely
-- she did not initiate this review in this forum!).

Heather Benbow wrote:
>What is 'feminist' about work which celebrates marriage, SM and rape?
[snip]
>I think it is vitally important that these views be critiqued and of
>relevance to the list. How, for example, would an advocate of this 'new
>feminism' critique sex slavery and domestic violence? Isn't feminism
based
>on a critique of hierarchy and power? How can someone who celebrates
>hierarchy critique it?

I agree that these are all questions that need to be asked and discussed
(not because I necessarily agree with your position, but because I think
they are central questions for feminists and for Women's Studies), and
your post raises these issues very well.  If this had been the manner in
which these issues had been addressed initially I would have had no
complaint.

Jessica Nathanson

On 05/21/02 10:39 pm, "Heather Merle Benbow"
<benbow    AT    MYRIAD.ITS.UNIMELB.EDU.AU> wrote:
> Isn't feminism based on a critique of hierarchy and power?

Yes, including the hierarchy of adult consentual sexual expressions
and desires (e.g. vanilla good, S/M bad) promoted by radical feminists.

> How, for example, would an advocate of this 'new feminism'
> critique sex slavery and domestic violence?

I already critiqued sex slavery in my April 9 response to Sheila
Jeffreys (see http://eminism.org/interchange/20020410-wmstl.html).
As for domestic violence, some of the most progressive organizations
fighting against domestic and sexual violence (for example, SFWAR and
Asian Women's Shelter in San Francisco) are leading major ideological
and structural shifts as they incorporate multi-issue, intersectionist
views on violence and oppressions rather than the one that focuses
primarily on the impact of the "patriarchy." I know that many
"radical feminists" are not happy with these changes, but you should
at least listen to SFWAR and others if you want to know how "new
feminism" is critiquing domestic violence and how that challenges
older understanding of domestic violence.

Also, I have a project on domestic violence that I've been working
on since last year which looks at the experiences of women who have
been abused by DV shelters and other "feminist" anti-DV services,
and how to hold feminist anti-DV organizations accountable using
tactics successfully employed in other fields (e.g. homeless advocacy,
HIV prevention). I have presented some of this previously (I gave
the opening keynote for Women's Herstory Month at New York University
titled "Shelter as a Tool of Social Control: Is there a Domestic
Violence Industrial Complex?" - which I was surprised they actually
let me speak about). Again, you are probably not going to agree with
what I have to say, but it is simply not true that "new feminism"
does not have any sophisticated critiques of domestic violence.

Emi Koyama <emi    AT    eminism.org>

--
http://eminism.org/ * Putting the Emi back in Feminism since 1975.

On Wed, 22 May 2002, emi wrote:

> On 05/21/02 10:39 pm, "Heather Merle Benbow" wrote:
> > Isn't feminism based on a critique of hierarchy and power?
>
> Yes, including the hierarchy of adult consentual sexual expressions
> and desires (e.g. vanilla good, S/M bad) promoted by radical feminists.

To call radical feminist analysis of this issue a "hierarchy" is to commit
a real rhetorical sleight of hand.  Radical feminists criticize
hierarchy.  S/M is a form of sexuality based on the eroticiziation of
hierarchy.  Therefore, radical feminists criticize it and yes, believe
that it is less "good" than other, less hierarchical forms of sexual
expression.  If to criticize hierarchy as less good than non-hierarchy is
*itself* to set up a hierarchy (in an objectionable sense) then all
critiques of hierarchy are doomed from the get-go.  Pretty nifty move, but
ultimately not successful.

Rebecca W.

Nobody likes a flame war less than me, so I hope to keep this thread from
devolving into one. But since Sheila Jeffreys wrote me a personal letter on
this public listserv, I'll respond here as well.

My concern is the condescending and violent tone of Jeffreys' posting. The
dismissiveness, defensive anger, and low blows remind me of how older men once
felt free to treat younger women. Somehow a small but vocal group of second
wave feminists have taken on the posture that bosses used to take in relation
to their secretaries.

Jennifer Baumgardner, in her recent appearance on "Oprah," spoke of a similar
experience when she met with the editors of _Mode_ magazine to plan paired
articles from younger and older women on feminism. During the meeting, the
_Mode_ editors starting talking about how Jennifer was dressed (backless black
dress), saying they would never dare wear something like that to work, that
they would not have been taken seriously, that they still see it as somehow
inappropriate. I was struck in hearing this scene described by how Jennifer
had become the secretary and the older women had become the boss - focusing on
what she was wearing instead of what she was saying.

I feel sort of the same way now, being reprimanded for writing a sexual book
and having that sexuality used against me in the name of feminism. The
boss/secretary dynamic usefully replaces the mother/daughter paradigm to
represent the relationship between two generations of feminists.
Boss/secretary clarifies for me the power dynamics passing between some
established feminists and feminists at the beginning of our careers.

I specifically differentiate my position in the book from "patriarchy's
prodigal daughters" and the tone in some young women's writing that "addresses
feminism as a strict teacher who just needs to get laid," seeking instead to
sort through the many different feminisms of the second wave, and the many
different feminisms in even a single feminist author's oeuvre. The treatment
of what Jeffreys calls "the new feminism" is as problematically monolithic as
old school patriarchal bosses towards women, or white second wave feminism
towards women of color. Germaine Greer makes a similar gesture in _The Whole
Woman_, where she conflates Spice Girls and Riot Grrrls into one monolithic
label, Bimbo Feminism. There are many different feminisms among third wave
writers, few deserving such a superficial title.

One of the strengths of _Jane Sexes It Up_ is its genuine grappling with
ambivalence towards desire, feminism, power, sexuality, each essayist's
admission of weak points, vulnerabilities, insecurities, and a sustained
effort at really listening to other feminists, not rejecting or caricaturing
them. It's weird: Sheila Jeffreys feels like I'm being violent towards her; I
feel like she's being violent towards me. Something is being garbled in the
exchange. When I first approached Jane Gallop to write the foreword, she
recoiled a little, as she later told me, thinking my book was one of those
anti-feminism feminist books. The fact that she and I listened to each other
long enough to hear our striking commonalities and recognize our initial
misconceptions shows that multi-generational coalition is possible and worth
working at. I still think Jeffreys (and Dworkin) and other radical feminist
writers are "brilliant social analysts and bad-asses" (she left the first part
of my phrase off, for some reason), but it becomes harder and harder to keep
that respect intact when it is not offered in return.

In mutual respect-
Lisa Johnson

Heather wrote:

"What is 'feminist' about work which celebrates marriage, SM and rape?"

Are these three items intended to be seen as comparable?  Once again, with
statements like this, no wonder "feminism" is losing its audience.

DP

---------------------------------
daphne.patai    AT    spanport.umass.edu

Rebecca wrote:

> S/M is a form of sexuality based on the eroticiziation of
>hierarchy.  Therefore, radical feminists criticize it and yes, believe
>that it is less "good" than other, less hierarchical forms of sexual
>expression.

I've always seen myself as a radical feminist, possibly because
when my feminist consciousness coalesced, 'feminist' was a
synonym for 'radical'.  Perhaps I'm now a back number, though.

Do today's radical feminists not see a distinction between
voluntary and involuntary hierarchies?  That seems an important
distinction to recognise, somehow.   Choosing to subordinate
oneself, e.g. in pursuit of a larger goal, can be an expression
of power rather than weakness, just as a person who can give
freely is more wealthy on some level than one who cannot.

S&M (of which I neither have nor desire experience) creates a
voluntary, playful hierarchy that serves the desires of both
parties.  It seems to me that play is a worthy goal in itself,
and one that needn't apologise for itself, but it can also serve
a larger purpose.   It's only in play that we can safely rehearse
strategies that might make all the difference later, in the
outside world, where stakes can be mortal.

An unabashed leftist, I despise imposed hierarchies because they
hardly ever serve the needs of all participants equally.  I
strongly prefer and seek out egalitarian relationships.  But at
the same time, I am happy to subordinate myself in the service of
a goal I think worth pursuing, if need be.  Doing that feels
completely different, to me, than having a hierarchy imposed on
me, and I wonder why there is such an apparent difference between
my perception and Rebecca's.

in Sisterhood,
Margaret

--
Margaret Tarbet / oneko    AT    mindspring.com
--------------------------------------
Il felino pi· piccolo F un capolavoro.
--Leonardo da Vinci

Hello, WMST-L,

I may be missing something, but I didn't hear Jeffreys' tone as either
condescending or violent.  I heard it as direct and straightforward.
For one thing, Jeffreys sent her message to Lisa J first instead of
saying everything in a published review.  This was so Lisa would have
a chance to reply.  This is according to the ethics that I've always
heard from radical feminists - - to directly engage people personally
so there can be a discussion and a chance to reach some common ground
*before* going public with your critique.  (Of course, the question
arises whether e-mail is "public" or "private"!)  I also heard
Jeffreys as staying with the issues.

She did make the "bad-ass" remark, maybe not realizing that being
characterized as bad-ass, coming from a U.S. Third-Waver, might even
be a compliment.

Maybe the fact that I am somewhat sympathetic to Jefreys' position
(although not in all the details) made me not hear it as hostile.  But
I'm somewhat sympathetic to Johnson's as well, especially when she
says she does not buy into the media's atttempts to pit older and
younger feminists against one another.  So, Lisa, I really don't feel
that you were being personally attacked; I do think that Jeffreys was
giving you an uncompromising critique, from her position as a
socialist and radical feminist with a certain critique of contemporary
views of sexuality.

Of course, it's not pleasant to have someone disagree with you in
public, and one might at first feel attacked.  But since argument is
the principal mode of discourse in academe, I think we need to be able
to take valid criticism of our ideas and to be able to distinguish a
critique of them from a personal attack.  (I include myself as well;
when someone writes back disagreeing with me on this, I'm sure I'll
get as irate as anyone else!  But I think I'll try to refrain from
calling them names.)

I further wonder whether this persistent issue may be related to a
U.S. American style of communication as opposed to an European
(specifically British) one.  I was raised in the U.S., but I was also
raised to believe that argument over ideas was *not* the same as
attacking people.  Most Americans, however, see them as the same.  If
you disagree with me, you are attacking me, according to many.

It may be because we (U.S. people, not just women) are not taught much
about how to argue about ideas in school.  Therefore, many of us think
arguing means attacking persons.  This may give rise to the
phenomenon, on the one hand, of always trying to be nice and saying
that "all opinions are valid" (a view that puzzles me, unless it's
said in the context of therapy, where the therapist is trying to get a
patient to have more self-confidence or to be more tolerant of others
- - and, yes, I believe in subjective reality!); or, on the other
hand, of acting as though a difference of opinion entitles one to draw
and quarter the one differed from.  A sort of intellectual road rage.

Marilyn Frye has an article in the APA Bulletin (I don't remember the
issue - sorry) about feminists disagreeing and how we tend to take our
ideas seriously, as though they actually might have some effect on the
world.  So we tend to think that if someone disagrees with us, they
are guilty of moral failure of some sort.

Although I think we should continue to take our ideas seriously, I
think we should abandon the moral failure part.  Most of us, even if
we hold wildly differing views on sex or whatever, are trying to work
and live with integrity.

I welcome comments.

Cheers,
Charlene

M. Charlene Ball, Ph.D., Academic Professional
Women's Studies Institute
Georgia State University
University Plaza
Atlanta, GA   30303-3083
404-651-4633
404-651-1398 fax
mcharleneball    AT    gsu.edu
http://www.gsu.edu/~wwwwsi

I would simply like to support Charlene's excellent and articulate
response. I had been framing something like that in my head all morning
while, alas, having to do others things.

I especially agree that Americans are not raised to debate ideas
without rancour and personal pique.  I think that is due to the fact
that we are basically a country of Puritanical origins and tend to see
good and evil and little in-between unless our educational and/or
persoanl experiences miraculously lead us out of those dichotomies.
Politically, we are also moulded by the intellectual meagerness of
effectively a two party system.

Cheers to all, especially Lisa, who is a fine builder of theoretical
bridges among the generations and factions of feminism.

Viki Soady
Valdosta State U

On Wed, 22 May 2002, Margaret Tarbet wrote:

> Do today's radical feminists not see a distinction between
> voluntary and involuntary hierarchies?  That seems an important
> distinction to recognise, somehow.   Choosing to subordinate
> oneself, e.g. in pursuit of a larger goal, can be an expression
> of power rather than weakness, just as a person who can give
> freely is more wealthy on some level than one who cannot.

-snip-

> me, and I wonder why there is such an apparent difference between
> my perception and Rebecca's.

Well, I'm not sure there is *that* much of a differeence.  Of course I
would agree that some hierarchies are OK and even useful (i.e. the one
between me and my professors during graduate school) -- and their being
in pursuit of a "worthy goal" is one relevant factor there (though
probably not the only one).

(And by the way, I agree that "play" in itself can be a worthy thing, but
I don't think we should be too quick to agree that "play" is really the
primary, let alone the only goal of S/M activity.  I've often suspected
that the rhetorical description/definition of S/M as "play" functions --
whether intentionally or not -- to undermine criticism of it as a real
activity in the real world, with real effects on real people.)

Furthermore, of those hierarchies that aren't OK, some are worse than
others.  So for instance, I would certainly agree that involuntary
hierarchies are worse than voluntary ones, other things equal.  For
instance, rape is way worse than fully consensual adult S/M (to the point
where one is quite properly a legally criminal act, and the other is
properly not).

The logical leap that often occurs here, from my point of view, is then
going on to assume that therefore consensual S/M is perfectly OK.  But
consent isn't the *only* moral or political question to be asked about
sexual acts and practices, any more than it is the only question about
economic or other kinds of acts and practices.  It's *one* important
question, but it's the beginning of moral and political discussion, not
the end.

I'd also like to echo Charlene's point about the importance of
distinguishing between vigorous and impassioned critique of ideas and
"personal attacks" (let alone "condescending and violent" ones).  I think
it's inevitable that we'll have differences of opinion about what does and
doesn't count as the latter rather than the former.  Often I "check" my
own perceptions by asking myself what I would think if the posting were
one I agreed with (if I don't) or one that I didn't agree with (if I do,
as with Sheila's post).

Rebecca W.

Greetings!

It's been a while since I have posted, but I have followed the threads
over the past few months.  Now that I am done with my thesis project, I
can get back to active involvement with discussions on list.  :-)

Are you certain that we can say "radical feminism criticizes hierarchy,
s/m is an eroticization of hierarchy, and therefore radical feminism
criticizes s/m and believes it to be 'less' good"?

I would disagree with that line of reasoning for a number of reasons:
First, while I think it is fair to say that some self-identified radical
feminists certainly make the critique as Rebecca delineates, I would
point out in contrast that it is likely there are a number of (perhaps
third wave) radical feminists who do not make the same assessment of
s/m.  Second, I think by making an absolutist assessment of s/m -- and
its relation to both hierarchy and radical feminism -- we are failing to
address some critical questions around some of the possibly beneficial
or liberatory aspects of practices like s/m, again we arrive at debates
over sex-positive feminist analyses and fail to see the complexity to
practices such as s/m and fall into the trap of reading s/m as a single
practice with a single meaning.

That's all for now,
Lisa
LBurke2    AT    njcu.edu

Lisa R. Burke, Coordinator
Office of Academic Services for Evening Students (OASES)
New Jersey City University
2039 Kennedy Blvd., GSU104
Jersey City, NJ 07305-1597
201/200-2233 (Telephone)
201/200-2234 (Fax)
oases    AT    njcu.edu or LBurke2    AT    njcu.edu

Ana Soady wrote:

> I especially agree that Americans are not raised to debate ideas
> without rancour and personal pique.

This may indeed be because of our puritanical background but it also is
because of the way weare trained to be competative in our graduate
schools.  As a Ph.D. student when I shared 'finds' with other students I
was looked on with suspicion.
Gaile
gaile.pohlhaus    AT    villanova.edu

Since someone mentioned the Oprah show on "second" and "third"
generation feminists, I'd like to know if this video is available.  I
didn't see it and so can't comment on the discussions, but a couple of
my WGS students were very downhearted about what they perceived to be
the insular individualism of the younger feminists and a sense that
the younger feminists had lost a vision of social justice for all
women. Does anyone know how to get my hands on this video and if it
would be worth showing in an intro WGS class?

Anya Silver

*******************************************
Dr. Anya Krugovoy Silver
Assistant Professor of English and Interdisciplinary Studies
Director of Women's and Gender Studies
Mercer University
1400 Coleman Ave.               "Tell me, what is it you plan to do
Macon, GA 31207-0001            with your one wild and precious life?"
(912) 752-5641                                         --Mary Oliver
silver_ak    AT    mercer.edu