View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by DigitalCommons@Pace Pace University DigitalCommons@Pace Pace Law Faculty Publications School of Law 1-1-2007 Toward a Third-Wave Feminist Legal Theory: Young Women, Pornography and the Praxis of Pleasure Bridget J. Crawford Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.pace.edu/lawfaculty Part of the Law and Gender Commons, and the Law and Society Commons Recommended Citation Bridget J. Crawford, Toward a Third-Wave Feminist Legal Theory: Young Women, Pornography and the Praxis of Pleasure, 14 Mich. J. Gender & L. 99 (2007), http://digitalcommons.pace.edu/lawfaculty/243/. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Law at DigitalCommons@Pace. It has been accepted for inclusion in Pace Law Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Pace. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. TowardaThird-WaveFeministLegalTheory: YoungWomen,PornographyandthePraxisof Pleasure BridgetJ.Crawford† ABSTRACT This article critically examines a growing body of non-legal writing by womenwhohaveproclaimeda"third-wave"offeminismandsuggeststheways thatlegaltheorymightbeenrichedbythiswork.Scholarstypicallylabelthe nineteenth-century woman suffrage movement as the"first wave"of feminism, and view the legal and social activism of the 1970s as the "second wave" of feminism. The third wave of feminism, with its intellectual origins in the responsetotheClarenceThomasSenateconfirmationhearings,isareactionto the popular stereotype that feminists are humorless man-haters. Third-wave feminists proclaim their difference from second-wave feminists and celebrate "girlpower,"thejoysofmake-upandfemininity,thecomplexityofhumandesire andtheimportanceoffun. Using pornography as the central focus, this article explores the main themes and methods of third-wave feminism.