I resonated with your discussion about the need for activists to exaggerate the negative. I’ve personally experienced how much second wave feminism has changed things for women, and although I’m fully aware that there’s still room for improvement, I would love to see the leaders of second wave feminism and their accomplishments celebrated much more than they tend to be.
I’ve sometimes bristled at the critiques third wave feminists have of their earlier counterparts, because so much of the historical context these women were dealing with is left out of the picture. In fact, I have to wonder if third wave feminism could never have existed without the legacy left behind by the earlier feminists.
It makes me wonder if it’s the slow, incremental accomplishments that arise from such movements that tend to be overlooked. We can all look up the date when women got the vote in a certain jurisdiction, but it’s much harder to pin down when it stopped being okay to whistle at women or call them girls or broads or sweetie or honey or any number of other things now considered problematic. Nor can we put a date on when it became normal for men to do dishes or change diapers. But those kinds of changes matter deeply at the person to person level.
This is not to diss the work of present day activists. Activists are often the first people who see the need for changes that we will all eventually see the need for. If they were satisfied with the status quo, they likely wouldn’t be activists in the first place.
That said, I have to wonder if having an increased understanding of all of the progress that’s already been made in a particular area could work as an inspiration to today’s activists. Hmmmm.
I resonated with your discussion about the need for activists to exaggerate the negative. I’ve personally experienced how much second wave feminism has changed things for women, and although I’m fully aware that there’s still room for improvement, I would love to see the leaders of second wave feminism and their accomplishments celebrated much more than they tend to be.
I’ve sometimes bristled at the critiques third wave feminists have of their earlier counterparts, because so much of the historical context these women were dealing with is left out of the picture. In fact, I have to wonder if third wave feminism could never have existed without the legacy left behind by the earlier feminists.
It makes me wonder if it’s the slow, incremental accomplishments that arise from such movements that tend to be overlooked. We can all look up the date when women got the vote in a certain jurisdiction, but it’s much harder to pin down when it stopped being okay to whistle at women or call them girls or broads or sweetie or honey or any number of other things now considered problematic. Nor can we put a date on when it became normal for men to do dishes or change diapers. But those kinds of changes matter deeply at the person to person level.
This is not to diss the work of present day activists. Activists are often the first people who see the need for changes that we will all eventually see the need for. If they were satisfied with the status quo, they likely wouldn’t be activists in the first place.
That said, I have to wonder if having an increased understanding of all of the progress that’s already been made in a particular area could work as an inspiration to today’s activists. Hmmmm.