General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: RadFeminists are making it difficult for the Democratic party to fight the GOP's attack on women [View all]RainDog
(28,784 posts)obviously we are a long, long, long way from equality and sexism is a huge part of society that impacts all women in various ways - but if the second wave feminists had not been so successful in changing the conversation in the west about the role of women in society - other women wouldn't have had to freedom to look at various issues within 2nd wave feminism.
ultimately, I don't think "third wave feminism" is a rejection of "second wave" at all. I think it's an expansion.
What I see within various social movements is the reality that those with economic and social power (education, connections, etc.) are able to make their case. Sometimes their povs are somewhat narrowly focused, or work on the first obstacle - but there are others that come after.
If radical feminists had not questioned the very nature of what constitutes female - we could not have people arguing that patriarchal institutions harm males as well as females - because those institutions put men in as much of a social straitjacket as they do women. It's no easier to be a "success object" than it is to be a "sex object."
Barbara Ehrenreich argued that women still define men as desirable if those men earn more money - it is a sign of status for a female to marry a male who makes money - and upper middle and upper class women who complain there are no men available do so because they are engaging in classism - refusing to consider a male worthwhile if he is not in her economic class.
Ehrenreich also notes, tho, that poverty is feminized - poverty is the U.S. is directly related to one's gender, overall. This has to do with the costs of child bearing, rearing, many male's rejection of females who have children because of a fear of that economic burden - and, most of all, it has to do with a govt that still tells women to get married - not out of love, but to improve their economic standing - rather than admit that the state might have a reason to want to help move women out of poverty because, to do so, is good for the nation and the children those women raise.