Feminisms in American History
Brittany Stephenson
Introduction
Feminism can be thought of as both a historic movement (several, actually) as well as a theory of literary criticism. Criticism here means “assessment” and is not necessarily negative. Think of theories of literary criticism as interpretive lenses that we use when we interpret and create meaning from texts. As a literary theory, feminism focuses on the depiction of women in literature, distinguishing between texts written by men and texts written by women. Often, texts depict women in ways that are driven by patriarchal views of strict gender roles and women’s “inherent inferiority” to men. Feminist theory also seeks to foreground female writers and their experiences, as well as to focus on female readers and their perspectives.
Feminist theory asks questions such as:
- How are female writers different from male writers?
- How are female readers different from male readers?
- How does a historic time period, and its prevailing views on gender, influence both male and female writers of the time?
- How does a historic time period, and its prevailing views on gender, influence the depiction of both female and male characters?
- How do female writers navigate the pressures and constraints of patriarchal society as they develop their authorial identities?
First Wave Feminism
First wave feminism is commonly considered to have started in 1848 with the Seneca Falls Convention and ended in 1920 when women achieved the right to vote. The Seneca Falls Convention was a convention for women’s rights that occurred in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York. It was attended by 300 people, both men and women. They produced the Declaration of Sentiments which mimics the Declaration of Independence, except whereas in the Declaration of Independence King George is the oppressor and the colonists were the oppressed, in the case of the Declaration of Sentiments, men are the oppressor and women are the oppressed. Along with the Declaration of Sentiments they also passed twelve resolutions. Eleven of the twelve passed easily and unanimously. The only one that didn’t pass was Susan B. Anthony’s resolution to the right to vote. The women at the convention feared that the right to vote was too radical and if they included it, they would lose the whole thing. After much debate, Fredrick Douglass argued passionately for including the right to vote, making the case that all the other resolutions rested on the right to vote. The resolution ultimately passed, but not unanimously.
While there was a lot happening on the national stage in the fight for the right to vote federally, there was also a lot happening with suffrage at the state level. Different states allowed women to vote much earlier than the national government. Wyoming was the first state to give women the vote in 1869 , and Utah was among the five earliest states, giving women the right to vote in 1870. Finally in 1920, the 19th amendment was passed and women achieved the right to vote nationally. In other words, it took 72 years of activism to gain the right to vote.
Second Wave Feminism
In 1949, French theorist Simone de Beauvoir published The Second Sex which is a multidisciplinary essay that critiques the way in which fields such as biology, history, literature, psychology and philosophy essentialize women as the inferior (second) sex, making women the Other in relation to the subjectivity of men. The Second Sex contributed significantly to the theory of feminism and is still utilized as a primary text by feminists today. The second wave historic movement of feminism, however, did not begin until about a decade later.
Second wave feminism begins roughly in the early 1960s with the publication of Betty Frieden’s The Feminine Mystique, which looks at what she terms “the problem with no name.” “The problem with no name” is this experience that middle class white women were feeling at the time, where despite the security they had with homes and families, they were deeply dissatisfied with their lives. She was exploring what was going on with women who, for all outward appearances, should be happy with their lives, but instead were incredibly unhappy as they felt unrest at not having access to educational and professional opportunities outside the home and were instead relegated to only a domestic life. Thus the women’s rights movement springs up alongside the Civil Rights movement.
Some key events in second wave feminism:
- The FDA approves the oral contraceptive pill (1960), which gives women much more control over when to have children and provides greater freedom for them to pursue academic and professional interests.
- President Kennedy establishes the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt (1961). He also appoints women to high-ranking positions in his administration.
- The Equal Pay Act is passed (1963).
- The National Organization of Women (NOW) is founded, with Betty Friedan serving as the first president of the organization (1966).
- Title IX is passed (1972).
- Roe v Wade makes abortion legal (1973).
- The Women’s Educational Equity Act is passed (1974).
- The Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which makes it illegal to discriminate against a pregnant or post-partum woman in the work place, is passed (1978).
What was second wave feminism focused on?
- Rethinking women’s domestic roles
- Rethinking society through a female lens
- Reproductive rights (birth control, abortion, family planning, ending forced sterilization)
- Protection from rape, sexual harassment and domestic violence
- De-sexing the English language
- Educational access
- Equality legislation
- Promoting political participation
- Support for women as parents (maternity leave, family leave, insurance coverage)
- Rethinking representation of women in popular culture
Third Wave Feminism
Second wave feminism, like first wave feminism, was primarily a white women’s movement, ignoring the experiences, perspectives and contributions of women of color. Third and fourth wave feminism are much more inclusive. An important part of the beginning of third wave feminism came out of Olympia, Washington, with the emergence of riot grrl in the punk sub-culture. During this time, feminists were also developing grrrl zines as a way to share feminist ideas. In the International Feminist Journal of Politics, Kevin Dunn writes, “Using the do-it-yourself ethos of punk to provide resources for individual empowerment, Riot Grrrl encouraged females to engage in multiple sites of resistance. At the macro-level, Riot Grrls resist society’s dominant constructions of femininity. At the meso-level, they resist stifling gender roles in punk. At the micro-level, they challenge gender constructions in their families and among their peers.”
At the same time, another force behind third wave feminism was Clarence Thomas’s nomination to the Supreme Court. At his hearings, Anita Baker Hill accused him of sexual harassment. After extensive debate, the United States Senate voted 52–48 in favor of Thomas. In response, Ms. Magazine published an article by Rebecca Walker, entitled “Becoming the Third Wave,” in which she stated: “I am not a post-feminism feminist. I am the third wave” (Walker).
The year 1992 brought some historic and important political milestones for women:
- Four women were elected to the United States Senate, joining the two who were already there (that’s 6/100 Senators).
- Janet Reno became the first female Attorney General of the United States.
- Madeline Albright became the first female Secretary of State of the United States.
- Ruth Bader Ginsberg became the second female Supreme Court Justice.
Continuing into the 1990s and early 2000s, we have additional notable political milestones for women:
- The Family Medical Leave Act becomes law in the US (1993).
- Criminal Justice and Public Order Act confirms that marital rape is illegal in the UK (1994). (This doesn’t happen in the US until 2010.)
- The Violence Against Women Act becomes law in the US (1994).
- The UN convenes the 4th World Conference on Women in China (1995).
- Condoleeza Rice becomes the first female US National Security Adviser (2001).
- The March for Women’s Lives is held in Washington D.C., to support the right to abortion, access to birth control, scientifically accurate sex education, and prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted infections. They also marched to show support for mothers and children (2004).
- Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Liberia becomes Africa’s first elected female leader and the first female black president in the world (2005).
- Angela Merkel becomes Germany’s first female chancellor (2005).
- Nancy Pelosi becomes the first female Speaker of the House in the US (2007).
What is third wave feminism focused on?
- Much more global in nature
- Concerned with intersectionality and the social construction of identity
- Working toward gender, racial and economic social justice
- Far more inclusive in terms of race, class, (dis)ability and sexual orientation
- Focused on a gender continuum rather than a gender binary
- Breaking the glass ceiling
- Concerned about culturally transmitted ideas/perceptions about gender, sexuality, femininity and masculinity
- Concerned with an individual’s right to define one’s self and determine one’s own life
Fourth Wave Feminism
In addition to continuing the work of third wave feminism, with a particular emphasis on intersectionality and empowerment of women globally, fourth wave feminism is also focused on:
- Fighting against sexual harassment, rape culture, and body shaming
- Representations of women in the media
Fourth wave feminism started in December 2012 when a young 22-year-old woman, Jyoti Singh, was brutally gang raped and murdered on a bus in India. This incident sparked local protests all over India, and internationally as well, bringing global attention to the problem of violence against women.
Another key event in fourth wave feminism was Gamergate in 2014 where several women were harassed online for being involved in online gaming. In 2014, Zoe Quinn developed a game called Depression Quest. Once it was released, people started harassing her online, doxing her, swatting her and making rape, violence and death threats against her. Similarly, Brianna Wu, co-founder and director of Giant Spacekat Studio (an independent game development studio) received the same kind of treatment for being involved with game development. Anita Sarkeesian, a media critic who has a YouTube series on Tropes Vs. Women in Video Games also received the same kind of threats and harassment; she was scheduled to speak at Utah State University and received a threat that someone was going to bring a gun to her presentation to hurt her. She reached out to the university and to local law enforcement, but because of the laws in Utah, they were unable to guarantee her safety, so she cancelled the event. All three women made complaints to the FBI, yet there were zero arrests made in any of their cases. Furthermore, in 2015 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Elonis v. United States that harassing messages sent online are not necessarily “true threats” that would be prosecutable under criminal law.
In the aftermath of the January 6, 2021 United States Capitol attack, Brianna Wu said that “everything I tried to get the FBI to act on in the aftermath of GamerGate has now come true. …We told people that if social media companies like Facebook and Reddit did not tighten their policies about these communities of organized hate, that we were going to see violent insurrection in the United States. … We told people that these communities were organizing online for violence and extremism. That, unfortunately, has proven to be true” (Vinopal). Furthermore, Joan Donovan, research director at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, said that key figures in Gamergate worked to raise online fury ahead of the January 6 attack (McLaughlin).
Another hallmark of fourth wave feminism is the #MeToo Movement. The phrase was actually coined in 2006 by Tarana Burke as a way to support women who have survived sexual violence. The movement gained huge momentum in 2017 with the Harvey Weinstein case, after which women started coming forward in droves sharing their survival stories. The #MeToo Movement continues to provide support for survivors of sexual violence.
Conclusion
Understanding the historic context surrounding the texts you read is one approach to analyzing literary texts. Given that you have read and will read texts by and about women, understanding these important historic waves of feminism will bring depth and nuance to your reading experience.
Works Cited
Ahmed, Saeed and Tony Marco. “Anita Sarkeesian Cancels Utah State Speech After Threat.” CNN. 15 Oct. 2014.
Dunn, Kevin C. “Pussy Rioting.” International Feminist Journal of Politics, vol. 16, no. 2, 16 June 2014: 317–334.
Kelion, Leo. “Feminist Video-Games Talk Cancelled After Massacre Threat.” BBC News. 15 Oct. 2014.
McLaughlin, Eliott C. “Violence at Capitol and Beyond Reignites Debate Over America’s Defense of Extremist Speech.” CNN. 19 Jan. 2021.
Vinopal, Courtney and Justin Stabley. “How the U.S. Capitol Attack Highlights the Challenges of Thwarting Online Right-Wing Extremism.” PBS NewsHour. 13 Jan. 2021.
Walker, Rebecca. “Anita Hill Woke Us Up.” HuffPost. 27 Oct. 2011.
