Feminist Thought of the Day – The Third Wave – Gail Dines

@Lavender Blume

My pleasure. :)

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@Vern

Hi Vern.

How can you have Point #1 (No structural inequality) and Point #4 (Lots of individuals making lots of individual choices with lots of self-empowerment) exist in the same real world?

Neo-liberalism is an ideology constructed to justify the existence of the current model of predatory capitalism. By definition capitalism must have a large exploitable class of people. But how do we strip our empathy away and make the oppression seem like a normalized feature of society?

We get all choosy/choicy and strip the class based context away from people so then we get individuals who just “choose not to get out of bed and work – or are just lazy” – omitting the important class based contextual reasons why they happen to be at the bottom of the ladder.

I’m all for it, […]

That has been apparent, at least in your posting history here.

And what does Dines mean by “de-fanging”? Taming the political edge and placing more focus on the individual?

Neo-liberalism serves to disempower people from recognizing that they are part of a class and that to change things they need to work together as a class to modify society.

Making choosy choices and being individualistic and only using these qualities to define one’s place in society strengthens and maintains the status-quo.

In terms of feminism it is the severing of praxis from theory.

The definition of feminism you see floating around these days is always something like this :

“Feminism is the belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.”

Compare and contrast:

“Feminism is the organized movement of women that are dedicated to dismantling of the oppressive structural features of society that perpetuate inequality and hurt women and men.”

Which definition accurately identifies the problem in society? Which one requires changing the status-quo? Which one accurately enfolds the idea that there are power gradients in society?

Anyhow – that is my primer on what you’re talking about. The slide I posted is from this lecture.

The specific slide can be found at this point in the lecture.

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@bleatmop

Hiya Bleat. :)

I always find your opposition to the third wave by name to be interesting when you openly support many of the things third wavers do. For example:

I’m guessing by ‘interesting’ you mean inconsistent. :) In general, I am not really a big fan of much of what the third wave is currently about. Like Dines what they brought to the table in terms of inclusiveness and intersectionality are huge points. But past those two important pillars – not so much. Much of the third wave represents a divorce between praxis and theory, which is not so good when attempting to change the status quo.

Slut Walk: Clearly a sex positive movement run by the sex positive third wavers.

Hmm…I’ve never been a fan of the various Slut Walks. Trying to reclaim a term so far gone is not, in my opinion, a good use of time. I am solidly behind Take Back the Night and other such activities.

Atheism Plus: Brought to you by Jen McCeight, who as you might guess is another sex positive third waver

It is very rarely that one completely agrees with the entirety of any one platform or movement. Atheism is good and stuff, but very limited if restricted only to one axis of action/activism. The social justice angle of A+ dovetails nicely with most of what I think is important in a movement.

But not all of it. I cast a jaundiced eye toward much of the sex positive stuff because if feels much more like empowerful behaviour rather than revolutionary work that is going to change the norms of society.

Your advocacy for LGBTQ persons, who are people who were part of the reason why there became a third wave. The second wave ignored these people’s issues until the third wave came along.

Trying to slot anyone’s beliefs into a neatly labelled box is always problematic at best. It’s like trying to be a fan of Dawkins – his science stuff and mainstream atheist stuff is great – but keep the boy away from twitter and women. Harris some neat thoughts on how bad christianity is and how toxic faith is – watch out for his views on Islam and profiling. Hitchens the same thing – his historical works are awesome as well as much of his work on atheism – but his views on war and neoliberal intervention…not so much.

It is an amorphous mixed bag at best. So one needs to be critical and pick and choose the positions and ideas that are good and acknowledge the dross for what it is.

Inclusivity and intersectionality from the third wave are good, even necessary parts of feminism. Not so much, for much of the rest.

Then she conflates that that person must be a third waver and therefore third wavers are simply neo-liberals in disguise (or so from what I’ve got 15 minutes in.

Making choices that are good for the individual, divorced from the social context of society, and then saying that those choices are good for society – is the conflation I would be worried about.

Because much of the third wave is divorced from theory such stark dichotomies, as you noted, can exist.

Pornography, quite simply, is the debasement of women for the gratification of men. The damage that pornography abets, sanctifies, and replicates in people and society is to the severe detriment of women and their rights.

Yet, pornography is “okay” in many of the facets of the third wave because “choices”. It just doesn’t work.

But hey, I guess having enemies is important? Why fight the Romans when the Peoples Front of Judea are such fucking assholes.

There is not a shortage of opponents when it comes to Feminism, we’re both vastly aware of that. Identifying and rejecting the problematic aspects of a particular wave of feminism and embracing the parts that work, in praxis and theory, is what keeps the movement going forward.

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