Breaking the Waves:
Continuities and Discontinuities Between Second and Third Wave Feminism

a thesis in progress by Jenn Frederick

The Third Wave

If there were one way to describe the Third Wave of feminism, it would have to be a movement of young feminists who not only confront but embrace contradiction and ambiguity¹ (Bailey 1997; Baumgardner & Richards 2000; Drake, 1997; Drake & Heywood 1997; Findlen 1995; Jacobs, 2001a; Jacobs 2001b; Orr 1997; Rubin & Nemeroff 2001; Walker, 1995). No complex movement can be fully summed up by one short phrase; nonetheless, "embracing contradiction and ambiguity" is the common theme running through literature by and about Third Wave feminists. Rather than seeking perfect consistency in their lives and politics, Third Wavers accept that lives lived in patriarchy will inevitably include compromises and complexity. Therefore, for instance, a Third Waver might simultaneously recognize the use of make-up by patriarchy to tell women that their unmodified faces are inadequate, and at the same time claim the right to wear lipstick for fun. As Krista Jacobs², editor of the on-line zine Sexing the Political, states, "young women are celebrating their pluralities, embracing their personal and political contradictions." This acceptance and celebration of ambiguity and contradiction is also seen by some Third Wavers as that which "unites the Third Wave. [It] is our negotiation of contradiction, our rejection of dogma, our need to say 'both/and,'"^³. Just as the Second Wave had its differing theories and ideologies, many Third Wavers hold varying views on what feminism is about. However, beyond the age distinction, the acceptance of contradictions seems to be a unifying aspect and rallying point. "Even as different strains of feminism and activism sometimes directly contradict each other, they are all part of our Third Wave lives, our thinking, and our praxes: we are products of all the contradictory definitions of and differences within feminism, beasts of such a hybrid kind that perhaps we need a altogether"⁴.

The term "Third Wave" can be traced back to the mid-1980s when a diverse group of feminist activists and academics teamed up to create an as yet unpublished anthology they titled The Third Wave: Feminist Perspectives on Racism⁵. While the primary focus was on multiracial aspects of feminism rather than age, the term continued to circulate among some feminists and reappeared in 1992 in response to the nation-wide publicity surrounding the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearing and the William Kennedy Smith trial, both of which had occurred in 1991. "One hundred young feminists gathered in New York City and organized themselves into and activist network they called 'The Third Wave.' . . . The first project was Freedom Ride 1992, a three-week bus tour to register voters in poor communities of color across the country. In this incarnation, the third wave emphasis was on organizing young feminists, and this is the emphasis that stuck"⁶.

The women and men of the Third Wave came of age at a time when feminism had already become a part of society. They grew up with the "sense of entitlement feminism made possible"⁷. Third Wave feminists can barely remember, or were not even born, when Second Wave feminists established sexual harassment laws, made it possible for women to obtain credit without their husbands' approval, defined and strengthened laws against rape, made abortion legal in every state and fought for the right for women to be in the work force.

We are the first generation for whom feminism has been entwined in the fabric of our lives. . . . Maybe we're not as unified as the generation that preceded us. Maybe we're just not as categorizable. . . . So what may appear to be a splintering of this generation comes from an honest assessment of our differences as each of us defines her place and role in feminism. We are determined, as Sonja D. Curry-Johnson writes, "to bring our whole selves to the table"⁸.

The issues that Third Wave feminists face are, for the most part, different than those faced by Second Wave feminists⁹. "We grew up in a different world. We run into different problems then you did. Is it any wonder that we work with different issues?" Alana Wingfoot¹⁰ asks. "The meaning of younger women's actions and attitudes cannot be assessed without keeping in mind that the backdrop against which their actions are performed is, in many cases, significantly different"¹¹. It is important to avoid evaluating the actions, behaviors, and activism taken on by Third Wave feminists in the context of what was happening thirty years ago and instead analyze it within the context of what is happening today.

At about the same time that Third Wave was starting, a group of young women, primarily in the Northwest, were starting their own movement that became a big part of Third Wave feminism. This group, Riot Grrrl, emerged from the punk rock music scene in the early 1990s when many of the women involved in the punk rock scene became fed up with the male standard in punk¹². Much of the Riot Grrrl rhetoric embraces anger, especially related to the personal¹³. While there are no official "leaders" of Riot Grrrl, as with Third Wave, Kathleen Hanna, former lead singer of the band Bikini Kill and current lead singer of Le Tigre as well as the cofounder of Riot Grrrl Press, has become one of the primary voices of Riot Grrrl. Hanna emphasizes feminism in her writing and her music.

To me, a big part of feminism (or whatever you wanna call the rejection of the equation, girl=dumb) is the simple assertion that us girls are important. Our bodiesheartsminds are important enough that we will defend them, protect them, ourselves. We don't have to live lives that are filled up with events that are really just sentimentalized versions of abuse. We don't wanna live that way and we don't have to14.

Riot Grrrls, and Third Wave feminists, many times, are fighting new and different battles than Second Wave feminists are, and Third Wave feminists have been raised to protect and defend their rights and often even given a sense of entitlement to these rights. However, some of the battles remain the same and this sense of entitlement is not enough to protect them. That does not stop these women and men from fighting.

On July 7, 1993, Mia Zapata, lead singer of the Seattle-based band The Gits, was raped and murdered, her body left in an alley just hours after spending time with friends in a local bar¹⁵. In response to this horrific death, many of her friends, other members of the Riot Grrrl scene, and members of the broader music scene under the leadership of Valerie Agnew, drummer for The Gits, banded together to form an organization to honor Zapata. Home Alive is an organization that emphasizes self-protection by writing articles, teaching classes, funding art projects and concerts, and providing legal information on issues of self-defense, rape and assault. This group produced a benefit album, titled The Art of Self Defense, in memory of Zapata. This album includes 45 songs and poems by both well-known and unknown bands and singers such as Joan Jett, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Ann and Nancy Wilson, 7 Year Bitch, Jim Carroll, and even a few songs by The Gits (both with and without Zapata). All of the songs deal with the pain and anger surrounding Zapata's death as well as general songs about rape and abuse and women protecting themselves and finding safe spaces. "It is grounded in the gap between male and female, laced with tales of threat, regret and anger. It exposes much about the power of rock - and not every part of that is pretty . . . there's no CD or 'tribute' like it. Violent, intense and passionate, it pulls off the trick of pulling life from death."¹⁶. This is but one example of the commitment of Third Wave feminists (particularly Riot Grrrls and their supporters) as well as the type of activism taken on by many of these feminists.

Third Wave feminism is often compared to, and is certainly an outgrowth of, multiracial feminism, postmodern feminism, and queer theory¹⁷. The connection with postmodern feminism is an interesting example of the contradictions inherent in Third Wave feminism.

Certainly, there are many similarities between postmodern feminism and Third Wave feminism. Postmodern feminists reject the idea that there is one way women are oppressed and that there is one way to overcome this, the idea that there is a particular way to be a "good feminist," a duality of thinking and that there is an "essential unity of self through time and space termed self identity"¹⁸ [emphasis in original]. In addition, postmodern feminists celebrate women's bodies and femininity¹⁹. However, while there are most certainly some Third Wavers who are also post-modern feminists, there are several aspects of postmodernism that contradict Third Wave feminism as a whole. For instance, Third Wave tends to reject academic feminism²⁰ while postmodern feminism, like postmodernism as a whole, is firmly grounded in academic writing, so much so that many see postmodern feminists as being more grounded in theory than in praxis²¹. Many view postmodern feminists as being "deliberately opaque [and] view[ing] clarity as one of the seven deadly sins of 'the phallogocentric order'"²² and "use[ing] language and ideas in such a specific way that no one else can understand what they are doing"²³.

In opposition to this, many Third Wave feminists write in non-academic ways, purposely designed to reach the masses, rather than only academics. Nomy Lamm states, "The fact that I write like this cuz it's the way I want to write makes this world just that much safer for me" ²⁴.

Indeed, some Third Wave feminists reject postmodernism, particularly its analysis of sexuality. "[P]ostmodernism seem to say yes indiscriminately to all forms of 'disruptive' sexuality. By doing so, it sanctions the production of new sexualities without providing coherent political strategies through which to evaluate them,"²⁵. Third Wavers are often caught in the middle of the of what many see as a "prudish" view of many Second Wave feminists who see all sexual relations as oppressive²⁶ and the postmodern embracing of 'disruptive sexuality' without analysis. "This leaves young feminists either alienated, confused, or in the sex shop, spending lots of money on overpriced sex toys" ²⁷.

 ¹Bailey 1997; Baumgardner & Richards 2000; Drake, 1997; Drake & Heywood 1997; Findlen 1995; Jacobs, 2001a; Jacobs 2001b; Orr 1997; Rubin & Nemeroff 2001; Walker, 1995
² Jacobs, Krista. 2001b. "Engendering change: What's up with Third Wave feminism?" Sexing the political: A journal of Third Wave feminists on sexuality 1(1).
³Drake, Jennifer. 1997. "Review essay: Third Wave feminisms." Feminist Studies 23(1), 97-108
⁴ Drake, Jennifer and Heywood, Leslie. 1997. Third Wave agenda: Being feminist, doing feminism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
⁵ Orr, Catherine. 1997. "Charting the currents of the Third Wave." Hypatia: A journal of feminist philosophy 12(3), 29-45.
⁶ Ibid.
⁷Drake, Jennifer. 1997.
⁸Findlen, Barbara. 1995. Listen up: Voices from the next feminist generation, first edition. Seattle: Seal Press.
⁹ Allen, Kim. 1998. "The feminist generation gap." The 3rd WWWave and Wingfoot, Alana. 1998. "Different generations, different issues." The 3rd WWWave.
¹⁰ Wingfoot, Alana. 1998.
¹¹ Bailey, Cathryn. Draft. "Unpacking the mother/daughter baggage: Reassessing Second Wave power and Third Wave resistance."
¹² Baumgardner, Jennifer, and Richards, Amy. 2000. Manifesta: Young women, feminism, and the future. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Orr, Catherine. 1997.
¹³ Orr, Catherine. 1997.
¹⁴Hanna, Kathleen. 1996. "Bikini kill." Outpunk 6(8), 8-13.
¹⁵ Muscio, Inga. 1998. Cunt: A declaration of independence. Seattle: Seal Press and Rose, Cynthia. "The art of self-defense: Safety and violence hot topics on celebrity-packed CD."
¹⁶ Rose, Cynthia.
¹⁷ Bailey 1997; Drake 1997; Rubin & Nemeroff 2001
¹⁸ Tong, Rosemarie P. 1998. Feminist Thought: A more comprehensive introduction, second edition. Oxford: Westview Press.
¹⁹ Ibid.
²⁰ Siegel, Deborah. 1997. "The legacy of the personal: Generating theory in feminism's Third Wave." Hypatia: A journal of feminist philosophy 12(3), 47-75.
²¹Tong, Rosemarie P. 1998.
²² Ibid.
²³ Duchen, Claire. 1986. Feminism in France: From May '68 to Mitterrand. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
²⁴ Lamm quoted in Orr, 1997.
²⁵ Alfonso, Rita, and Triglio, Jo. 1997. "Surfing the Third Wave: A dialogue between two Third Wave feminists." Hypatia: A journal of feminist philosophy 12(3), 7-16.
²⁶ Ibid.
²⁷ Ibid.