Comments Elsewhere

I still just don’t get the demand for declaring a “Third Wave” in the first place. Not just because of my worries about the women who are targeted when this is done, but because, at a basic level, the effort is premature. The “First Wave,” as conventionally dated, doesn’t refer to a single generation of women; it refers to 72 years or so of organized feminist activity and thought, carried on by three generations of women who had lots of internal differences and some pitched battles over tactics, organization, goals, class, race, sexuality, ideology, etc. Those conflicts often took the form of intergenerational conflicts between the older leaders and young upcoming activists; sometimes they led to sharp breaks in organizational structures or to big swerves in the direction and character of activism.

Whenever the “Third Wave” language gets brought out I always just wonder why we can’t at least put a good 72 years of work into the Second Wave before we declare a new one.