Still Frustrated

I wrote about this before, albeit briefly, but it's still frustrating me to no end so I shall write about it some more!

I'm tired of being called a "bad feminist," or a "fake feminist," because of the decisions I make and the insecurities I feel as a woman and as a human being. This time people criticized me for planning to wear a sexy outfit for Halloween. First I said I'm going to be sexy jellyfish, which I am, it's a plan I've had for months - to me it's more funny, almost satirical, than a strict adherence to a patriarchal norm - but not everyone saw it that way. They really didn't like it when I even suggested an even "sluttier" Halloween costume, something I wasn't really planning on doing but I thought the idea, the play on words, was pretty funny. No no, I'm a bad feminist for being sexy on Halloween.

It's not as though I'm doing this as any sort of real statement. I'm just having fun. I don't think that everything I do has to be some big feminist action, I don't have to "stick it to the man" every second of every day, it would be exhausting as hell to even try. Sometimes I do wear high heels, I wear sexy panties, I wear pushup bras, I wear makeup, I go through extensive skincare routines trying to make my face look more human and less like the surface of some undiscovered planet. I don't do all of those things all the time, but I don't make a point of keeping such "tools of oppression" at arm's length. There are some things I won't touch, like Cosmo - I might pick up a friend's copy if a cover story really interests me or I'm just really bored, but I can't remember the last time I bought that magazine, or one like it, with the intention of actually reading it instead of cutting it up to make a collage. There are also things I avoided, TV shows like Mad Men and Big Love, then I caved and got addicted to them, knowing that they weren't entirely feminist TV shows but loving them anyway.

I could list a whole lot of things I do, and things I have done, that don't qualify as "feminist" actions. And to me, that's okay. I don't kid myself into thinking that those are empowered choices, because I know they're not, but I don't think they make me the anti-feminist or a "bad feminist" either. Again, not everything I do has to be a statement. I pick my battles, I guess.

The problem is that society has this view of what a feminist is, what a feminist believes (and this assumption goes beyond a belief in gender equality), what a feminist is supposed to love and hate, what a feminist wears, what a feminist eats, how a feminist dates, how a feminist feels about herself - and when a woman who declares herself to be a feminist strays outside the boundaries of that stereotype, she runs the risk of being attacked as a poser or a hypocrite, mostly by non-feminists who know little about what real feminism is. Now, there are some women who really are "fake feminists" like Sarah Palin, but I don't think that choosing to show my knees and cleavage on Halloween (le gasp!) puts me on the same level as her.

Now, when this happens, when I am attacked like that, I know a "good feminist" would defend herself, and take the time to argue and debate and tell people to back the fuck off when all else fails, but I don't always have the energy or the time - I'm a college student, people, my days consist of class, club meetings, homework, errands, trying to stay on top of the housework, and usually falling short in one or more area because I'M NOT SUPERWOMAN; I'm running on chemicals I know are bad for me and will probably make me sick (nothing illegal), but I don't have time to get enough sleep, so excuse me if engaging in a heated, intelligent debate on gender issues isn't always at the top of my priority list - a lot of the time I just let it go. Walk away. Go do something productive, or relaxing if that person really steamed my clams. It's not always worth it. I have one friend in particular whom I've been butting heads with for years over the topic of feminism, and I know he's probably not going to come around anytime soon. Sometimes it really is like talking to a wall, you're not going to get through to everyone.

I think this really links back to what I wrote earlier about us being in a complacent lull or a regressive period rather than a wave. The difference here is legitimacy - First and Second Wave Feminism may not have had sweeping public support, but they did have legitimacy in the public eye as a real social movement. Right now, we don't. We're seen as a joke, an unnecessary "movement" that has served its purpose, a bunch of angry women who complain about everything but aren't getting anything done. And you can direct your criticisms about feminism at me all you want, but I can't rev up the feminist movement single-handedly, or at all really. I'm doing some feminist work on my campus but I don't really have the time or resources to fix things beyond that right now. Someone actually accused me of not caring enough about a particular abortion-related bill because it passed and I wasn't able to stop it. The bill wasn't even passed on my state, it was passed in middle America, what did he want me to do, fly over there and storm the legislature? By myself? I am one very tiny human being with little influence, what do people expect me to do? Excuse me if I haven't changed the world at 22, to do so would be a remarkable, if not completely unrealistic feat. I want to change things for the better, that's why I'm going to school, but give me some time and stop jumping on me when I fail to live up to crazy expectations about what I, as a feminist, am supposed to be doing.

I got a little off topic. This was more of a rant than an intelligent, well-thought out and researched post, I'll admit that. I'm just very, very pissed off these days.

This Isn't a Wave - But It Should Be

After the Women's Suffrage Movement (or the "first wave" of feminism), there was a decade of complacency. Women enjoyed their right to vote, but beyond that, saw no reason to push for more rights, nor did people in general feel the need to care about politics. It was a period known for its music, its fashion trends, and for its fun-loving attitude. Women began to show more skin, party more, and enjoy sex more than they ever had. Compare the 1920's to the 1980's, where women has just received a plethora of rights from the Women's Liberation Movement (or "second wave" of feminism), but suddenly began to see a greater focus on looking good (crazy fashion trends, big hair that required a lot of work and styling products), being thin (think of all the workout videos associated with the decade), and being sexual (think MTV).

Shortly after the 1920's came a period of depression and war. Eyes were on Washington again, as politics suddenly became more relevant to everyday people, but there was little focus on women's rights. Sure, women entered the workplace when family money was scarce, and when WWII required women to take the jobs the men left behind, and along with that surge in women's labor came adjustments to women's rights in the workplace. Similarly, in the last decade we've seen a greater interest in politics as the country went to war and plunged into a recession, but those concerns were so great that women's rights have hardly been a social or political priority. Women are going to work not because they necessarily want to, but because they need to in order to put food on the table.

The period between the first and second waves of feminism did see some feminist activity. Someone had to fight for women's labor rights in the 1930's and 1940's, and surely the American people had greater support for these reforms during that time period because there was a need for women's labor. The New Deal also included support for low income mothers. Feminism wasn't dead in that time period, but it was very subtle, a fringe movement that people paid little attention to. That's where we are now.

We're not in a "third wave" of feminism. The Third Wave hasn't come yet. We feminists are like surfers out in the water, trying to catch the occasional baby wave and occasionally getting a good ride in, but nothing major has come our way since the 1970's. We're in a lull, and almost a regressive period where, if anything, legislatures are drastically turning back the clock on women's reproductive rights; rape apologism and victim blaming are rampant with no end in sight, and people are so concerned with evil jezebels making false rape claims that even victims are beginning to doubt their own stories; and people still defend employers who pay their female employees less money for the same job, or who impose greater image standards on the women who work for them than the men who work for them. To many people, feminism is a dead movement. We got what we want, why don't we fight for something more important, right?

In order for Third Wave Feminism to become a reality, there needs to be a catalyst - an earthquake to churn the tsunami. The first two waves arose out of the struggle of African Americans - the suffrage movement arose out of the abolitionist movement; and the early women's liberation movement had close ties to the civil rights movement. Could the catalyst for Third Wave Feminism once again be connected with a racially charged movement? Could be, since we're no more post-racial than we are post-feminist. We don't see any feminist activity arising from an anti-war movement either, as it had during the Vietnam war. Abortion and gay marriage are hot button topics, but as much as they're closely tied with modern-day feminism, there are plenty of people who are pro-choice or pro-gay marriage without identifying as feminists, and there are even people who identify as both pro-life and feminist.

If we are in the early stages of Third Wave Feminism, we need momentum. And if the wave hasn't come yet, we need to figure out how to make it happen.