Who? What? When? A Feminist? – F Bomb, Guy Feminists, and The Third Wave
The F Bomb - My new favorite blog (yes, Bedsider, you are still dear to my heart) is written by a bad ass Midwestern feminist teen… whew, quite the descriptor to live up to! I stumbled upon an F Bomb blog post How Feminism Helps Everyone (Not Just The Women) when I was doing some research on what teen feminism looks like today. What I found? Feminism today is like all things 2010 – complicated! We are the grandchildren of the feminists who gained the right to vote, and the children of those who fought for reproductive rights and workplace equality. Today, it’s a little less clear what we are fighting for.
One thing is clear though – the world ain’t perfect yet, and the best way to change the future, in the words of Famous Feminist Gloria Steinem, is to “…reflect what we hope for in the future in what we do everyday,” in an interview with F Bomb blogger Julie Z - “Then we don’t exactly know what’s going to happen, but we can be more sure that it will look like what we’re hoping for.”
Gloria Steinem - the Fabulous, Famous Feminist Herself!
Feminism is described by bell hooks in Feminism is for Everybody as “a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression” or "the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of sexual equality" by the Oxford English Dictionary. Seems like common sense, right? Unfortunately, there are still millions of examples of sexism and gender violence happening all over the world, every day and even in the U.S., where we often take equality as a given (when in fact it isn’t even close!)
We “third wave feminists” (feminists after 1981) have the right to vote. We can open a bank account without permission from anyone. We can get birth control (at least in California) without asking our parents. I, for one, want to say THANK YOU to my mother and grandmother for making that my reality. And now it’s my turn, our turn, to change the (much more complicated) things that we see wrong with the world, so that our kids can ask us someday “Mom, what is rape? I read it in my history textbook the other day and I didn’t know what it meant” and “My teacher said that when she was a kid, men couldn’t marry men, and adopt kids! Weird!”
And most importantly, anyone can make this reality! Anyone can be a feminist! It doesn’t have to be a college professor, or a woman, or someone who has enough time to volunteer… feminism is about how YOU live YOUR life… either respecting those who identify as women and their allies, or not. Are YOU a third wave feminist? Why? How? Tell us in the Comments Section - open below!