Pace University DigitalCommons@Pace Pace Law Faculty Publications School of Law 2010 The Third Wave's Break from Feminism Bridget J. Crawford Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/lawfaculty Part of the Law and Gender Commons, Law and Society Commons, Legal History Commons, and the Sexuality and the Law Commons Recommended Citation Bridget J. Crawford, The Third Wave's Break from Feminism, 6 Int’l J.L. Context 100 (2010), http://digitalcommons.pace.edu/lawfaculty/874/. 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]. international Jo urnal of Law in Context, 6, 1 pp. IOo-I02 (WIO) Cambridge University Press doi: lo.I017/S I744552309990346 Pri nted in the United Kingdom The third wave's break from feminism Review by Bridget). Crawford in the humanities latched on to 'third-wave femin­ Professor of Law, Pace University, New York ism' as a new basis for critical examination of the E-mail: [email protected] successes and failures of the feminist movement. doi: 10.'017IS, 744552309990346 (Heywood and Drake 1997) 'Third-wave feminism' has come to stand for a feminism defined primarily Janet Halley proves that third-wave feminism is wrong­ in opposition to its historic precedents. As one writer wrongly described, that is. Young feminists in the United describes, '[iJ t doesn't mean man-hating or being States tout a 'third wave' of feminism that is hip, ironic humorless! There is a new thing called "third wave" and playful - the supposed opposite of the dour and feminism that will open the door so you can embrace strident 'second wave' of 1970S feminism. Goodbye politics by being who you are!' (Wong, 2003). Third­ frumpy sandals; hello sexy fishnets, according to third­ wave feminism embraces personal preference, irony wave feminism. Initially young women themselves (and and contradictions. now writers and scholars) embraced a powerful wave Read in the aggregate, third-wave feminist writing metaphor to convey a generational conflict within fem­ reveals common concerns: sexuality, fluid personal inism. In this metaphor, youth crashes against (and identities and the role of the media in shaping and ultimately overtakes) its elders. But rifts within femin­ challenging gender roles. 1 Third-wave feminists ism cannot be so neatly explained. The story is more employ first-person narratives (Harde and Harde, complicated than third wave vs. second wave, young vs. 2003) and embrace a coalition politics in service of a old, fertile vs. menopausal. The wave metaphor obscures liberal left agenda (Baumgardner and Richards, 2000). a more complicated story of the power of labels. Theirs is a feminism that asserts the right to enjoy a 'Feminism' is such mighty label that third-wave femin­ spanking without any risk of subordination (Dailey, ists want to remake it and Janet Halley wants to take a 2002) and the pleasures of compensated nude dancing break from it. In spite of their different vocabulary, (Frank, 2002) and sexual intercourse for hire (Pullen, though, third-wave feminists and Janet Halley share 2002). In the third-wave worldview, pornography, to similar goals and methods. Feminism has no use as a give one example, has no meaning or significance label- a theory, even - unless it yields to the complex other than that which the actor or consumer gives it realities of human experience. (Doyle and Lacombe, 1996)3 The point is that the cultural and social weapons that had been identified (rightly so) in the Second Wave as instruments of Background oppression - women as sex objects, fascist fashion, pornographic materials - are no longer being exclu­ In 1991, then twenty~two-year-old activist and writer sively wielded against women and are sometimes Rebecca Walker pronounced in the pages of Ms. Magazine 'I am not a postfeminism feminist. I am the wielded by women. [Third-wave feminism] presumes Third Wave.' (Walker 2002, p. 86) Although Walker that women can handle the tools of patriarchy and did not elaborate, feminist writers and organisers in don't need to be shielded from them', explain Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards in the iir third-wave their twenties (and younger) embraced this youth­ oriented label in the popular press and mass-marketed text, Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future books.l Not too long after, academics w.orking mostly (Baumgardner and Richards, 2000, p. 141). See, e.g., Walker (1995); Findlen (1995). 2 For a discussion of the principal themes and methodologies of third-wave feminism, see Crawford (2007). 3 At pp. 191-92: 'The feminist understanding of pornography as a way of seeing, a gaze, was a more sophisticated approach to sexist imagery than that of radical feminists for two reasons. First, rather than reducing porn to the truth of sex (man's violence), it directed our attention to the context [on .. the production and consumption of sexist images possible ... Second, it emphasized, at least potentially, the viewer's activity in the production of meaning in pornography.' THE THIRD WAVE'S BREAK FROM FEMINISM I 101 The goals of critique however. A third-wave feminist might describe the plea­ sures she derives from dressing in a hyper-feminine Third-wave feminist writers and Janet Halley share an style or nude dancing, without claiming anything emphasis on critique. Third-wave feminists direct more than this is my choice and it is all part offeminism theirs explicitly and implicitly at second-wave femin­ HaUey's deployment of the first and second person ists. According to one third-wave author, the critique entices the reader into what seems like a conversation: that is third-wave feminism is: 'A bold theory can startle you out ofwom-out habits of mind, enable you to see newly and act creatively. But in 'a welcome sign to my generation of young my experience - yours, too? - it's horrifying to live that women, allowing us to at once differentiate our­ way too long' (p. 9). HaUey is explicit about her aims: selves from our feminist mothers and at the same 'So I hope to elicit your desire to think that no theory, time achieve mainstream power in our careers and no one political engagement, is nearly as valuable as love lives. It allows us the self-righteousness of the invitation to critique that is issued by the simulta­ being political activists without the economic neous incommensurate presence of many theories sacrifice or social marginalization that has so (past, present and still to be made)' (p. 9). If third­ often corne along with that role. It is a feminism wave feminists pursue personal pleasure, Halley no longer on the defensive, with a fun, playful steeps in the 'hedonic of critique' (p. 9), not only for aesthetic that acknowledges the erotic and narcis­ the pleasure it gives, but also because she believes sistic pleasure women receive from beautifying there is no other honest way of approaching legal themselves, a pleasure not to be denied.' problems. We cannot know what is right or wrong; (Walker, 1995, p. 16) we can only make more (or less) harmful choices. To Third-wave feminism's utility thus is limited by its claim legal certainty, under the banner of feminism or reactive framework. By failing to advance an alternative any other theory, Halley suggests, is hubris. worldview, third-wave feminism is 'trapped within the mother-daughterrelationship, albeit as only children to a controlling "mother" feminism' (Henry, 2003, p. 2r8). The vocabulary of critique In Halley's work, in contrast, critique itself pro­ Despite their shared use of the first-person narrative, vides liberation from the intellectual straightjacket Janet Halley and third-wave feminists take opposite that is feminism. Her proposed solution to the problem views of feminism's theoretical capacities. Third-wave of unitary theoretical deployment (or what third-wave fem inists have articulated a thirteen-point 'manifesta', feminists would call 'the feminism that assumes there or agenda for young feminists, which includes coalition­ is one pure way to be and it is anti-capitalist, super­ building across traditionally disempowered groups in serious and hostile to bikini waxes and Madonna' advocacy for reproductive rights (Baumgardner and (Pollitt and Baumgardner, 2003)) is critique itself. Richards, woo, p. 279), equal access to health care Halley calls for a 'hedonics of critique' (p. 9), an intel­ (p. 280), labour-force rights (p. 280) and constitutional lectual and practical pleasure in deciding 'right' from guarantees of equality (p. 281). According to the 'wrong', presumably in a legal sense. 'J am urging us to Manifestds authors, 'the issues on which (third-wave indulge - precisely because we love justice but don't feminists] focus are broader than those historically iden­ know what it is - in the hedonics of critique' (p. 9). tified as feminist issues, such as environmental issues, Halley rejects the notion that anyone particular theo­ prison reform, and fair housing. And with the current retical approach to a legal or political problem is 'bet­ convergence of so many movements that are simulta­ ter' than another. At most, according to Halley, one can neously working to reframe leadership, such as political strive for awareness of how particular choices 'spread groups and the media, this generation of feminists is ripe both benefits and harms across social and ideological for this transition' (Baumgardner and Richards, 2003, life' (p. 9) (although it is not clear that such awareness p. r64). carries with it a mandate to distribute maximum ben­ Third-wave feminists want to redefine feminism as efits by doing the least amount of harm).