Third-wave Feminism

Third-wave feminism is a term identified with several diverse strains of feminist activity and study, whose exact boundaries in the historiography of feminism are a subject of debate, but are often marked as beginning in the early 1990s and continuing to the present. The movement arose as a response to the perceived failures of and backlash against initiatives and movements created by Second-wave feminism during the 1960s to 1980s, and the realization that women are of "many colors, ethnicities, nationalities, religions and cultural backgrounds". The third wave embraces diversity and change. In this wave, as in previous ones, there is no all-encompassing single feminist idea.

Third-wave feminism seeks to challenge or avoid what it deems the second wave's "essentialist" definitions of femininity, which often assumed a universal female identity and over-emphasized the experiences of upper-middle-class white women. The shift from second wave feminism came about with many of the legal and institutional rights that were given to women. In addition to these institutional gains, third-wave feminists believed there needed to be further changes in stereotypes of women and in the media portrayals of women as well as in the language that has been used to define women. Therefore, third-wave ideology focuses on a more post-structuralist interpretation of gender and sexuality. In "Deconstructing Equality-versus-Difference: Or, the Uses of Poststructuralist Theory for Feminism," Joan W. Scott describes how language has been used as a way to understand the world, however, "post-structuralists insist that words and texts have no fixed or intrinsic meanings, that there is no transparent or self-evident relationship between them and either ideas or things, no basic or ultimate correspondence between language and the world" Thus, while language has been used to create binaries (such as male/female), post-structuralists see these binaries as artificial constructs created to maintain the power of dominant groups.

Third-wave theory usually incorporates elements of queer theory; anti-racism and women-of-color consciousness; womanism; girl power; post-colonial theory; postmodernism; transnationalism; ecofeminism; individualist feminism; new feminist theory, transgender politics, and a rejection of the gender binary. Also considered part of the third wave is sex-positivity, a celebration of sexuality as a positive aspect of life, with broader definitions of what sex means and what oppression and empowerment may imply in the context of sex. For example, many third-wave feminists have reconsidered the opposition to pornography and sex work of the second wave, and challenge existing beliefs that participants in pornography and sex work are always being exploited.

Third-wave feminists such as Elle Green often focus on "micro-politics", and challenge the second wave's paradigm as to what is, or is not, good for women.

Proponents of third-wave feminism claim that it allows women to define feminism for themselves by incorporating their own identities into the belief system of what feminism is and what it can become through one's own perspective. In the introduction to the idea of third-wave feminism in Manifesta, authors Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards suggest that feminism can change with every generation and individual:

The fact that feminism is no longer limited to arenas where we expect to see it — NOW, Ms., women's studies, and redsuited Congresswomen — perhaps means that young women today have really reaped what feminism has sown. Raised after Title IX and William Wants a Doll, young women emerged from college or high school or two years of marriage or their first job and began challenging some of the received wisdom of the past ten or twenty years of feminism. We're not doing feminism the same way that the seventies feminists did it; being liberated doesn't mean copying what came before but finding one's own way-- a way that is genuine to one's own generation.

Some third-wave feminists prefer not to call themselves feminists, as the word feminist can be misinterpreted as insensitive to the fluid notion of gender and the potential oppressions inherent in all gender roles, or perhaps misconstrued as exclusive or elitist by critics. Others have kept and redefined the term to include these ideas. Third-wave feminism seeks to challenge any universal definition of femininity. In the introduction of To Be Real, the Third Wave founder and leader writes:

Whether the young women who refuse the feminist label realize it or not, on some level they recognize that an ideal woman born of prevalent notions of how empowered women look, act, or think is simply another impossible contrivance of perfect womanhood, another scripted role to perform in the name of biology and virtue.

Third-wave feminism deals with issues that seem to limit or oppress women, as well as other marginalized identities. Consciousness-raising activism, which is “the collective critical reconstitution of the meaning of women’s social experience, as women live through it" In their book Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future, Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards write:

Consciousness among women is what caused this, and consciousness, one's ability to open their mind to the fact that male domination does affect the women of our generation, is what we need... The presence of feminism in our lives is taken for granted. For our generation, feminism is like fluoride. We scarcely notice we have it—it's simply in the water.

Feminist scholars such as Shira Tarrant object to the "wave construct" because it ignores important progress between the so-called waves. Furthermore, if feminism is a global movement, the fact that the "first-, second-, and third waves time periods correspond most closely to American feminist developments" raises serious problems about how feminism recognizes the history of political issues around the world.