Feminists anonymous; Part one (history and introduction)

Feminism in the last 10 years has been at a painfully slow crawl. The perpetrator of this dormancy is the media, trying to convince the masses that feminism had reached its full potential, deserves a pat on the back, and then should promptly drop off the face of the earth, burying it’s ‘radical ideals.’ The media may be carrying the news that feminism is dead, but media is prime example for feminism to continue the fight for women’s equality. Because of traditional gender stereotypes and negative images and behaviors that are encouraged throughout the various media, feminism has not been able to impact society to its fullest potential and therefore cannot close its chapter in history.

To understand the various opinions that feminism is no longer needed and has died out, it is important to see what the women’s movement has achieved so far, as well as defining which beliefs and events belong to which waves of feminism. The first wave of feminism waned and ebbed after the initial beginnings with Seneca falls and the Eighteenth Amendment. The first wave provided more independence for women during the Great Depression; as women had to show strength for the family, and again in the migration of the 30s; when traditional family ties were often broken when extended families were separated and new locations offered new experiences. [Treanor] World War Two is a climax of the wave when employment for women offered jobs in industries they had never been able to work in prior to the war. In 1948, when men returned, many of those same jobs were lost and most women went back to the household. By 1950, women wanted to forget the tragedy and losses of the wars and go back to tradition. There was a huge economic boom as people could buy things limited during the war, and often had a lot of money to spend. Women were once again concerned with the house and found new economic liberties. This calm in feminism filled with housewives and babies was broken with the second wave of feminism, which was started by Betty Friedan with the release of The Feminine Mystique, a book that addresses ‘the problem without a name.’ Friedan also, in 1966, founded the National Organization of Women, or NOW. NOW supported the NAACP and other civil rights groups as well as complete gender equality, believing that men are victims of the inequality alongside women. The Civil Rights Act and Equal Pay Act, in the 1960s, helped ensure equal opportunity employment and equal pay for women doing the same jobs as men. The second wave also exploded with Supreme Court Cases that dealt with birth control rights, mutual divorce, maternity leave, marital and cohabitation rape, jury duty, limits for jobs women hold, favoring men, and, very famously; Roe v Wade in the case concerning abortion. Second wave feminists fought for violence and assault issues, maternity issues and birthrights, women’s rights in jobs traditionally reserved for men, and sought political action and attention. The remainder of the second wave began to split due to many differences in ideas because of generation changes. Sexual issues such as pornography, masochism, the sex industry, and gay/lesbian rights were new interests of feminists. Annexing this, the third wave of feminism was ushered in, beginning in the 1990s. The third wave also focuses on American feminists being involved in other countries as well as the problem of women’s economic dependence in our own, and third wave’s philosophy is focused primarily on the idea that gender and sex are two different things, and are not dependent of each other. Sex is a result of genetics while gender is formed from social conditions.

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