"Waves" of Feminism

PART 2 OF 5

On 05/22/02 09:38 am, "silver_ak    AT    MERCER.EDU" <silver_ak    AT    MERCER.EDU> wrote:
> Since someone mentioned the Oprah show on "second" and "third"
> generation feminists, I'd like to know if this video is available.

I find it problematic to insinuate the relationship between second
and third waves of feminism as solely generational, as it would
privilege the dominant group's experience of being in any particular
"generation." The term "third wave" was used first by women of color
in the 1970s to position themselves outside of the second wave - a
tone somewhat adhered to in earlier "third wave" anthologies like
_Third Wave Agenda_ and _To Be Real_ but almost entirely whitewashed
in _Manifesta_.

Last year I coordinated a "research cafe" on third wave feminisms
at NWSA, in which I made the following proposal: re-define third
wave feminism as the feminism "outside of" or "beside" the second
wave rather than "after," and as the feminism that starts from the
realization that there are many power imbalances among women that
are as serious and important as the power imbalance between women
and men. If you are interested in continuing this conversation,
please come to Third Wave Feminisms + Bisexual/Transgender
Interest Area Groups' joint meeting in Las Vegas.

> 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.

It is interesting that second wave feminists who have consistently
complained about how *they* were depicted by the mainstream media
would wholeheartedly accept anything the same media report about
young women or feminists with all of its anti-youth, anti-feminist
distortions. And then they accuse young women of buying into the
media stereotypes about the second wave feminism. Sigh.


Emi Koyama <emi    AT    eminism.org>

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

To be fair, this is how the Oprah show framed it, as a tension between
generations of feminists. I think this is what the original email is
referring to.  It's very "maternal" in particular ways.

Jennifer
jharris    AT    Yorku.ca

I am having a little trouble understanding this discussion.  Why does
distinguishing each group's label privilege second wave feminists? I am
asking these questions without rancor or antagonism; I just don't
 understand.

Does this mean that there is no respect or recognition due to the women of
that generation who have spent their lives fighting for women's rights?

Does it mean that if I--age 51--decide that  my sympathies are reflected
more by Third Wave feminists than Second Wave feminists, I can call myself
a Third Wave feminist?

Does it mean that Third Wave feminists are of a certain age--20-35? But
that second wave feminists' ideas are perceived as getting more respect
because we are older? because our experience is wider?

And if I was bringing up issues of women of color in the women's movement
in the 1980s (see my article in
_Identity Politics in the Women's Movement_ (ed. by Barbara Ryan, New York
University Press, 2001) was I riding the crest of the third wave? Would
current Third wave feminists claim me as their own?

If the wave theory doesn't work, what other organizing paradigm would you
prefer?

I haven't had a lot of experience with Third wavers, but I did attend a
lecture last winter by one of the young women writing in that genre (for
want of a better word.) We--a contemporary of mine went with me-- felt
great sadness listening to her because it appeared to us that there
were a great many generalizations that glossed over the years we
spent working and the goals that we achieved.  I had the sense that
she hadn't read our work, or if she did, she only saw it flat on the
page rather than reflected in the changes in the world around her.

We struggle with a dynamic tension in the women's movement.  So many things
have changed, yet so many struggles keep having to be fought (eg.,
abortion), I guess I don't really understand the need for divisions among
us.  Viewed through in a generational paradigm, young people have their own
struggles and battles to win, that's true; but why is there a problem
seeing the two generations side by side?  What is the issue in being
maternal?

Without the suffrage movement, without the post-suffrage movements of the
mid-century, we wouldn't have accomplished as much as we have.  No
feminists are saying that all the battles are won; if anything,
we--especially those of us who are teachers, bring those issues to the
attention of our students. (Yes there are some women, not feminists, who
think the war is won but I'm not talking about them.) Do Third wavers
believe that they appeared like Minerva, springing forth into life
full-grown?  Even Minerva was coming from somewhere; in her case, the
forehead of Zeus.

I don't understand.

Dra. Rosa Maria Pegueros, J.D., Ph.D.
Department of History
    & Women's Studies Program
217C Washburn Hall
80 Upper College Road, Suite 3
University of Rhode Island
Kingston, RI 02881
         E:mail: pegueros    AT    uri.edu
         Phone:(401) 874-4092
         Fax  :(401) 874-2595
Web pages:
http://www.uri.edu/personal/rpe2836u/
http://nick.uri.edu/artsci/wms/pegueros.htm

Reporter: Mr. Gandhi, what do you think of western civilization?
Mahatma Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.

Her shows can be purchased.  If it was a fairly recent show, you can order it
on Oprah's webpage.  If you do not know the exact date, you may have to
search a little.

-Amy Calvert
Texas Woman's University Graduate Student
Denton, TX
AEBrumbalow    AT    aol.com

I find the tendency by some on this list to characterise their particular
brand of (liberal or queer or postmodern) feminism as THE feminism of
young women troubling. Sure, it makes for great anecdotes about young
women being reprimanded by 'older' or '2nd wave' feminists, and means that
these older women can be pilloried with analogies like the boss/secretary
image, but ultimtely it shows a lack of understanding of the various
strands of feminism. There ARE young, radical feminists on this list and
elsewhere. We do not wear backless black dresses and feel maligned by
radical critiques of sexuality and the objectification of the fashion
industry - because we have read, understood and endorse these critiques!
The generational thing is a red herring because the kinds of approaches
advocated under the banner of third wave feminism are often in explicit
opposition to earlier - and/or radical - feminist critique and work. We
are dealing with different philosphies here, which  no amount of mutual
respect and inter-generational communication will reconcile. I have no
problem with hearing and evaluating the critiques of older feminists.

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

On 05/22/02 12:42 pm, "Rosa Maria Pegueros" <rpe2836u    AT    POSTOFFICE.URI.EDU>
wrote:
> I am having a little trouble understanding this discussion.  Why does
> distinguishing each group's label privilege second wave feminists?

I am having a little trouble understanding where you got that from.
You seem to be responding to what I have said and yet I do not think
I said anything about second wave feminists being privileged.

> Does it mean that if I--age 51--decide that  my sympathies are reflected
> more by Third Wave feminists than Second Wave feminists, I can call myself
> a Third Wave feminist?

Of course.

> Does it mean that Third Wave feminists are of a certain age--20-35?

Absolutely not.

> And if I was bringing up issues of women of color in the women's movement
> in the 1980s (see my article in
> _Identity Politics in the Women's Movement_ (ed. by Barbara Ryan, New York
> University Press, 2001) was I riding the crest of the third wave? Would
> current Third wave feminists claim me as their own?

I'm not interested in deciding what you are, but I have no problem
using the phrase "third wave" in that sense. I and several other
"third wave" identified scholars I know are working to push
generational politics out of the center of what it means to be the
third wave. As I said earlier, to equate "third wave feminisms" with
"young women's feminisms" would assume homogeneity within each
"generation" - a position which not only is flawed but also
privileges the dominant group's experience of being in any
particular generation.

On 05/22/02 10:33 pm, "Heather Merle Benbow"
<benbow    AT    MYRIAD.ITS.UNIMELB.EDU.AU> wrote:
> I find the tendency by some on this list to characterise their particular
> brand of (liberal or queer or postmodern) feminism as THE feminism of
> young women troubling.

Please be more specific about what you are referring to; I do not
recall reading anyone claiming their particular brand of feminism
as THE feminism of young women. Sure, I've heard people say such a
thing elsewhere (and yes, it annoys me as much as it does you), but
I just have not seen anyone on this list doing it.

> The generational thing is a red herring because the kinds of approaches
> advocated under the banner of third wave feminism are often in explicit
> opposition to earlier - and/or radical - feminist critique and work.

As someone who speaks as a third wave feminist, yes, I do advocate
approaches to many issues in explicit opposition to "radical feminist
critique." And no, it's not "the generational thing" - I locate myself
in the tradition of feminists of color and working-class feminists who
have critiqued hegemonic themes within radical feminism since 1970s.

> I have no problem with hearing and evaluating the critiques of older
> feminists.

You are being inconsistent here: if it is wrong for a liberal, queer,
or postmodern feminist to characterize her particular brand of
feminism as THE feminism of young women, then it should be also
wrong for a radical feminist to characterize her particular brand
of feminism as THE feminism of older women.


Emi Koyama <emi    AT    eminism.org>

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

Rebecca wrote:

>[clip]
>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.

It's not as clear to me that any kind of parallel can be drawn
between sexual and other relationships, particularly not economic
ones in the US.   Women now have choices that decouple sex and
economics in ways that weren't true even as few as 30 years ago.
Now women are on an equal (subject to all the usual caveats)
footing with men.  It's still an awful footing from any
humanitarian, socialist standpoint, but we've at least breached
the barrier of sexual Apartheid and that seems a non-trivial
gain.

To me, sexual consent today seems on a parallel with the purchase
of a book, a novel.  Almost no one needs to actually buy a copy
of a novel.  There are other choices on several levels.  So any
consent to purchase seems to me to be as completely voluntary an
act as we can find.   The relationship between author and
purchaser is highly egalitarian--unless both benefit, neither
benefits.  So with sexual relationships, it seems to me, very
much including S/M ones.  Neither participant is constrained in
any way.  There is nothing at stake outside the relationship.  If
either party isn't getting their needs met, they can walk away.
(I'm ignoring issues of exploitative deceit, etc., because they
are potentially problems for any individual relationship,
including nominally non-hierarchical ones.)

>
>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). [clip]

I would as well.  Charlene's distinguishing US/UK styles feels
right to me from my own experience growing up.

in Sisterhood,
Margaret

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

I hope that Lisa Johnson is getting substantive off-list responses to her
request for suggestions for how authors can do publicity for books that
small presses aren't putting much effort into.  For all the fascinating
recent discussion on the list, she certainly isn't getting that information
here.  I, for one, would be interested to hear about the strategies people
on this list have used to get out the word about their publications.

Jane

Jane Rothstein,
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of History and
Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies
New York University
jr231    AT    nyu.edu
jane_rothstein    AT    mindspring.com

"Racing between mysticism and revolution..."
                     -- Phil Ochs

The Writers Union is always publishing articles in our newsletter and local
newsletters and running conferences on that subject.  If you are not a
member and are a writer, why not join?  We're a real union and provide
information and support [like grievance procedures when you get done in by
a zine or a book publisher] not otherwise available.

Poets and Writers magazine also regularly dispenses suggestions on that
topic.  So does the Authors Guild.  I can't imagine why someone would
especially expect such information on this listserve when there are so many
writers' listserves and publications for writers that cover all this
material, including books.

marge piercy  hagolem    AT    c4.net

I thought that term was being used in a complimentary way.  Like "bad"
is "good" is some contexts.  I am reading the book now, about two
thirds of the way through.  I recommend that people read it before
they firm up their opinions about it.  Talking about a book you
haven't read is like talking about a meal you haven't eaten or a place
you've never been.  Whaddaya really know?  Susan Koppelman
<<huddis    AT    aol.com>>

I appreciate Susan Koppelman's assertion that people read the book before
criticizing it. I am open to critiques, as a general rule, but disheartened to
read vast distortions of my position and the tone in _Jane Sexes It Up_. Both
Sheila and Heather Benbow indicate that I/the book/third wavers uncritically
celebrate marriage, romance, s/m, even rape (!)  -- which could not be farther
from the truth. The reason I felt attacked in Sheila's initial response/review
is that my careful and theoretically informed reflections on heterosexuality
have been reduced to the same kind of Cosmo-feminist or prozac-feminist
embrace of tradition that I argue against in the book itself. Another reason I
felt attacked was the sarcasm in which the response was rendered. (Example:
"You want to get married, too, of course.") It's the "of course" that sounds
sarcastic, and perhaps it wouldn't stand out to someone who hadn't read the
book and didn't realize how completely conflicted I am about desires for
mainstream institutions like het romance and marriage, how the purpose of my
sections on these subjects is to question their viability, to reveal the ways
these institutions remain uninhabitable for the most part, and the ways
radical feminist critiques of these institutions are disappeared from
mainstream media-mediated histories available to contemporary U.S. Americans.
My purpose is not to celebrate tradition but to reconnect with a feminist
critical history that has been buried and distorted so much so that I was
several years into grad school before I found the thread of feminist history
surrounding the Barnard conference and "sex wars" that ensued. In the book I
also work to define third wave feminism as an intersection of U.S. third world
feminism, queer theory, sex radical history, and youth culture. "Third wave"
is less useful as a generational marker than as a marker of this moment in
history in which we are all immersed. It is all this effort at coalition and
earnest feminist studenthood that makes the flippant dismissal and distortion
and strategically sensationalist quoting from the book so upsetting. When I
write that I originally saw the book project as a way of forcing feminism's
legs open and liberating her from the beige suit of political correctness, my
point is that this sort of arrogant ignorance is a product of a culture that
misrepresents feminism as a-sexual and rigid and petty, that young women who
take this stance are reacting not to feminism but to representations of
feminism, that the politics of representation need to be one of the first
lessons for young women in feminism. Sheila Jeffreys' posting bothers me not
because it disagrees with me (a condescending interpretation of my response to
her) but because it misrepresents the work, takes phrases out of context,
oversimplifies arguments, and makes several personal digs at me based on her
oversimplified version of my feminist values. Rather than celebrating rape,
for instance, I look at the ambivalence about female bodily integrity that
leads to date rape (situations where, in Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy
Richards' words, "it isn't clear whether we [women] had a choice"); rather
than wanting to "rape" feminism, I assert that young women feel an ambivalence
towards feminism because feminism is *both* the source of our resistance to
authority *and* part of the authority against which we resist. I know I must
ultimately let the book speak for itself, but I felt compelled to make the
point that feminist debate should show more concern for quoting with
integrity, engaging arguments in all their complexity, and avoiding
sensationalist representations of each other's work.
-----------------------------------------------------
The posts I'm responding to are primarily the following:

Heather Benbow: 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.

Jessica Nathanson: 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.

Charlene Ball: I may be missing something, but I didn't hear Jeffreys' tone as
either condescending or violent. I heard it as direct and straightforward.
<snip>  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. <snip> 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.
----------------------------

Also, I didn't receive information from people about publicizing feminist
books other than Marge Piercy's very helpful suggestion of joining the
Writer's Union, and I do disagree with her assessment of this listserv as an
inappropriate place for that question, since publicizing feminist books is a
very different endeavor from publicizing unfeminist or anti-feminist books.

Sincerely,
Lisa Johnson
lj30108    AT    mindspring.com

Just as a point of clarification -- I believe the original objection to the
term "bad ass" came from the woman whom this term is supposed to describe,
and she rejected this definition of her because she said it was not a
woman-centered term.  This has nothing to do with "is it a compliment or is
it not," it has to do with the implied message behind the term. I make no
judgments here, I am only summarizing the issue of the debate.  Along the
same lines, I know women who enjoy being told that they "have balls of
steel," and other women who deeply resent being praised for their fortitude
with reference to such a thoroughly *male* ideal.  The argument goes, why do
we have to pretend women are men, in order to celebrate their aggression and
strength? Perhaps the objection to "bad ass" is the same argument.

Ilana Nash
inash    AT    bgnet.bgsu.edu

----- Original Message -----

> I thought that term was being used in a complimentary way.  Like "bad" is
"good" is some contexts.

Lisa writes about

> "... how completely conflicted I am about desires for
> mainstream institutions like het romance and marriage, how the purpose of my
> sections on these subjects is to question their viability, to reveal the ways
> these institutions remain uninhabitable for the most part, and the ways
> radical feminist critiques of these institutions are disappeared from
> mainstream media-mediated histories available to contemporary U.S. Americans.

I have a comment and a question. The comment is this:  I think
heterosexuality as an institution (like all institutions) tends to erase its
dissidents and heretics from visibility. In other words, if you act too
"deviant", you often lose your straight credentials and get labeled queer.
So the history of heterosexuality is probably distorted by homophobia to
appear less varied than it really is. (This seems to have been one of Alfred
Kinsey's points of emphasis.) I think much recent work on feminist
approaches to sexuality--maybe this includes Lisa's book, which I plan to
read--is an attempt to correct this distorted history of heterosexuality so
that the dissidents and subversives become visible again to remind young
women that they are not freaks.

I have a pedagogical question that spins off from this. As a non-straight
person, I don't feel expert in the very legitimate struggle for "radical
heterosexuality" i.e. the struggle to transform heterosexuality into a more
egalitarian and satisfying institution. I tell my students that if they are
committed to heterosexuality, they may want to become experts in this
struggle. I don't question the sincerity and authenticity of their conflicts
and experiences. In other words, I don't presume that there's any "false
consciousness" unique to heterosexuality; I figure we all have areas of
"false consciousness" based on our social locations.

So I'm wondering about the strategies that other instructors, especially
les/bi/trans people, use to show the usefulness of non-straight critiques of
institutionalized heterosexuality while at the same time respecting those
who hope to transform that institution from within. As I understand it,
that's the whole point of queer theory: to create possibilities for
coalitions between heterosexuality's external critics and its internal
heretics. I'm thinking that "How far can you go and still be considered
straight?" might be an interesting question to start with. Has any one out
there tried that angle?


Leah Ulansey
Maryland Inst. C. of Art
leahu    AT    earthlink.net

In response to Leah's comment and question, I would recommend the book,
_Straight with a Twist: Queer Theory and the Subject of Heterosexuality_,
edited by Calvin Thomas. Drawing on this anthology, as well as Carol Queen's
_Real Live Nude Girl_, Michael Bronski's _The Pleasure Principle: Sex,
Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom_, Michael Warner's _The Trouble
with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life_, and the
Kitzinger/Wilson anthology on _Heterosexuality_, I create a concluding section
to chapter one in _Jane Sexes It Up_ called "Queering Heterosexuality" (a
phrase that was at one point the subtitle for the whole of chapter one).

The purpose and argument of my work in this area and, in a sense, my whole
anthology, is widening the parameters of heterosexuality to make room for more
flexible gender roles, more equitable distribution of power in bed (or even in
the kitchen), and less adherence to taboo and tradition. Parallel to whiteness
studies, wherein Marilyn Frye once wrote of commanding herself to "stop being
white" and other scholars responded by saying why not make "being white" mean
something different?, I am moving away from feminist dictates to "stop being
heterosexual" and looking at ways to "be heterosexual" differently.

I don't have it all figured out, no clear or final vision of what this
different heterosexuality, or as Lynn Segal points out, heterosexualit*ies*
might look like, but I use personal anecdote to find the edges where feminist
theories of heterosexuality meet up with and are applied in my life, and the
spaces where I can't quite make the two reach.

(I have some further thoughts on this topic that diverge from Leah's initial
question, so I'll send those in a separate message.)

Lisa Johnson
lj30108    AT    mindspring.com

Thinking once again about my reaction to Sheila Jeffreys' response to the book
(which she herself said was cursory, so I don't mean this as an argument so
much as part of a collaborative effort at clarification) I've outlined a brief
typology of kinds of feminist/political critique:

1. deconstruction: criticizing existing structures of power and thought
2. utopian: proposing a new vision of how things should be
3. consciousness-raising: holding deconstructionist critiques in one hand and
utopian visions in the other, then looking honestly at the gap in between, as
it manifests itself in one's life; sharing the complex parts of one's life in
a public setting in order to create personal and/or social change, even when
it doesn't put one in the best light.

_Jane Sexes It Up_ consciously chooses the third strategy, without rejecting
or caricaturing feminists who choose the others, in order to "confess" the
"problem areas" of our desire; our point is not to offer ourselves as role
models of feminist desire but as hard data on the frequent incompatibility of
these terms. To have an established feminist critic berate us for the problem
areas we offer *as such* seems unfair and unproductive - bad reading
comprehension and bad faith.

We've offered the most complex, ambiguous, troubling areas of our
feminist sexual anatomies - not because we think it's safe to do
so, safe to be sexual or deviant or ambiguous about boundaries, but
because we know it's *not* - we've offered them up in a brave
gesture of service to feminism, to push it farther, to refresh its
relevance to women in the current historical moment, to refuse simple
categories of thought like the Mars/Venus debacle being pimped so hard
by Oprah, and to negotiate with caution the radical feminist critiques
of heterosexuality, not because they are "too hard" as Jeffreys
suggests, but because they are as yet unapplied to lived
heterosexuality.  The people who do write the positive side of
heterosexuality - the sex-positive educators like Carol Queen, Lisa
Palac, Sally Tisdale, Annie Sprinkle, Betty Dodson, etc. - do not
engage the radical critiques of heterosexuality, simply write as if
they didn't exist, so we have feminists theorizing critiques of
heterosexuality and women's nonfiction embraces of heterosexuality,
but very little feminist writing that acknowledges and negotiates
radical critiques of heterosexuality *and* shows its applications and
shortcomings in a particular person's lived experience.

Jeffreys and Dworkin are both *right-on* in much of their critiques, and as I
write in the book, they prompt a "click" moment in our minds that cannot be
denied, leading us to question to their very foundations our desires which
remain imbricated in existing sexist, heterosexist, classist, and racist
structures of power. The problem is, they don't provide any answers, which
maybe isn't even their job - and is certainly not a reason to disavow them -
and none of the _Jane_ contributors do disavow them. We are trying to build on
them, going into the unmapped and tricky territory between the unacceptable
options of either rejecting heterosexuality or rejecting feminism. These are
not adequate options. This is not to say Jeffreys' work is incomplete, but to
mark out an area for third wave feminism to address.

Before _Jane Sexes It Up_, third wave feminist writing addressed the following
areas:

MULTI-RACIAL COALITION
_To Be Real_

BODY IMAGE
_Listen Up_

SEX INDUSTRY
_Whores and Other Feminists_
_Good Girls, Bad Girls: Sex Workers & Feminists Face to Face_

MEDIA ELECTED FEMINISTS (Paglia, Wolf, Roiphe, Dworkin, Hoff Summers,
MacKinnon)
_"Bad Girls"/"Good Girls": Women, Sex, and Power in the Nineties_

As Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake outline copiously in _Third Wave Agenda:
Being Feminist, Doing Feminism_, these elements of third wave feminism grow
out of U.S. third world feminism of the early 1980's, drawing heavily on the
work of bell hooks, Chela Sandoval, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldua, and Cherrie
Moraga. _Jane Sexes It Up_ is the first third wave book to make an extended
inquiry into sexuality by women who self-identify as third wave feminists that
isn't limited to responses to media icons, going instead for a sustained
application of queer theory to heterosexuality and feminist desire: to
recognize first and foremost how nebulous those labels are, to explore what
happens when you put "feminist" next to "desire," and, most importantly, to
move decidedly away from the red herring of "politically correct" sex, a
superficial non-issue that diverts attention away from considerations of real
change in the dynamics between heterosexual, bisexual, lesbian, and gay
romantic partners.

An important precursor to our book is the anthology edited by Carol Vance,
_Pleasure and Danger_, a collection of essays developed for and in response to
the Barnard Conference. Vance's book would certainly have been our model if
we'd ever heard of it, hence my point about radical feminist histories being
disappeared. It's more useful to mainstream society for feminism only to
appear in its most extreme forms, so that high school girls hear that
feminists think all sex is rape and then quickly and easily dismiss feminism
as nonsense. My hope is that by applying feminist theory, in all its nuanced
complexity, to the most mundane as well as the most exotic moments of our
romantic and sexual lives, this book will reveal the necessity and usefulness
of most feminist theory to attaining a sane and pleasurable relationship. I
entered grad school under the assumption that feminists had more in common
with fundamentalist preachers than with me; then of course I found out the
depth of my misconception - I found it out by reading feminists' work -
reading all of it, and reading it from the original sources, not second-hand
summaries or excerpts, which can be distorted or misconstrued. I am reminded
here of something bell hooks wrote in _Feminism Is for Everybody_:

"I tend to hear all about the evil of feminism and the bad feminists: how
"they" hate men; how "they" want to go against nature--and god; how "they" are
all lesbians; how "they" are taking all the jobs and making the world hard for
white men, who do not stand a chance.  When I ask these same folks about the
feminist books or magazines they read, when I ask them about the feminist
talks they have heard, about the feminist activists they know, they respond by
letting me know that everything they know about feminism has come into their
lives thirdhand, that they really have not come close enough to feminist
movement to know what really happens, what it's really about" (vi).

I would borrow this observation and apply it to second wavers who don't "get"
third wave feminism and to third wavers who don't "get" second wave feminism.
Read whole books, not excerpts, and recognize this: I haven't read a single
book by a feminist in which I did not find something I agreed with and
something I didn't agree with; rejecting whole books or everything by a
certain feminist or under a certain label is not a way to facilitate critical
conversation or social change.

In addition to seeing "third wave" as a time marker rather than marker of
generations, I also see it as apropos of current philosophies that work to
dismantle dichotomies: good/bad, man/woman, white/black, straight/queer, etc.
We join other cultural inquiries in the effort to discover and choose a third
choice, the *other* choice.  In this sense, "third" wave pries open the
impasse of falsely dichotomized feminisms: anti-sex and pro-sex.  Like
pro-choice and pro-life, anti-sex and pro-sex are obfuscations, rhetorical
sleights of hand.  I quote Dworkin in _JSIU_ in fact, for her line about
anti-sex being appended to anything that might get in the way of an erection.
She has a wonderful dark humor and insight that I find far more compelling
than any second-hand source on her would have let on.

Third wave has been discussed on this list in terms of whether the "wave"
analogy works, and whether the second wave is being made extinct prematurely.
The most evocative use of "third" for me comes from positioning myself at the
intersection U.S. third world feminism and contemporary queer theory, both of
which seek to locate a subject position outside existing dichotomous thought
structures.  Third wave feminism, then, joins in this gesture of complicating
every forced choice of either-or.  We want *the other one*: not anti-sex or
pro-sex, not second wave or third wave, not mothers or daughters, not old or
young, not men or women, not straight or gay, not choice/agency or social
construction.  The other one.

My grandma (age 77) and my aunt (age 55), both of whom are in the book's
dedication, read _Jane Sexes It Up_ cover to cover, and I am struck by the
idea that we engaged in our own private struggle towards multi-generational
coalition as we sorted out the boundaries of love and acceptance here in small
town bible belt, u.s.a.  I also did a reading at Zona Rosa, a women's writing
group in Atlanta in which most participants are 40+ (the oldest member is in
her seventies).  They all become very animated by the connections they saw
between my stories as a twenty-something and their own ongoing life sagas, and
they all breathed a sigh of relief to discover it wasn't, as they imagined it
might be, "a bunch of pornography."  Most of the writing is not explicitly
sexual, though I did, I must admit, tell my grandma she could skip over
Shannon Bell's essay (not a slam on Shannon - she's a great writer and pushes
my own thought structures beyond their limits - but it runs closer to
pornography than I thought my grandma would be able to bear). Grandma's
favorite was the one on feminist wifehood - I expect that with most readers,
there will be favorites and less favorites, but the important thing is to give
the book as a whole a fair listen and judge it at least equally on its
strengths and weaknesses.

Surely feminist critique, or "womanloving" writing to use Sheila Jeffreys'
pointedly self righteous terminology, means looking first for what women
writers do well and building on those strengths, not so quick or simple as to
look first or only for what we dislike or see as missteps.  For an example of
this kind of book review, see my portion of the roundtable review on
_Manifesta_, available on www.womenwriters.net, in which I use the metaphor of
the pony mount in seventh grade cheerleading, where one girl would put her
hands on her knees, and another girl would hop up on her back as part of a
pyramid.  There are plenty of sarcastic remarks that this image might lend
itself to, about its mimicry of heterosexist sexual positions or its
fat-phobic reinforcement of putting the larger girls on bottom, but perhaps
most will hear my point in using it to illustrate positive models for feminist
critical engagement.

Thanks to everyone for this discussion and for the opportunity to clarify my
response to Jeffreys' notes towards a review.

Some of you have written to say you've ordered the book - I wanted to mention
to all that part of the introduction is available to read now on
sexingthepolitical.org - there's a link to that text from my website at
http://www.westga.edu/~ljohnson/janepress.html where you can also read reviews
of the book.  I am putting together a schedule of appearances for the upcoming
academic year.  If you know of appropriate conferences or other opportunities,
please put me in touch with the organizers.

In feminist collaboration,
Lisa Johnson