Posts by Lilith __
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Up Front: Say When, in reply to giovanni tiso,
If I were Ian D, I’d be able to write a punning poem about bouncing backyard bisons in Berhampore. As I’m not, I can only note the poetic potential.
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Up Front: Say When, in reply to Islander,
Sparkly-animal of preference! :-)
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Up Front: Say When, in reply to Megan Wegan,
Aw :-) I like you too! Lets all have ponies.
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Up Front: Say When, in reply to Emma Hart,
Lilith: I know I said I’d been in a wet t-shirt competition. I have. Sally claims I said I had lots of fun.
Damn! No pony.
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Up Front: Say When, in reply to Emma Hart,
I have been back over the thread, and I will give a pony (sparkles optional) to anyone, ANYONE who can find this comment.
Google gets me a pony?! With sparkles?! It was in the original blog post:
There is one thing I do know, though, in my cloud of ignorance of proper girl-stuff. I hid my body for far too long when I was younger, out of shame and insecurity. That was when my choice of clothing was overly-influenced by social expectations, not on Tits Out For Ourselves Day. My confidence to dress as I please is precious, and I think it's feminist, and I'm not going to put it away in a hurry. And apparently, as long as we're still having this argument, exposing boobage is practically activism. (About twenty years ago, I did enter a wet t-shirt competition. I knew exactly what I was doing and why, thanks.)
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Up Front: Say When, in reply to BenWilson,
when I claimed he was really forward thinking
I remember feeling quite depressed reading the work of 19th century feminist theorists, just beacuse they seemed to be saying much the same things, and fighting much the same battles, as we have been in the last few decades.
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“First-wave” feminisim usually refers to late 18th-century (Enlightenment era) through to the early 20th century (when women were gaining suffrage and other political rights in most of the Western World). That cetainly doesn’t mean there weren’t feminist writers or theorists in earlier times; I’m glad to learn about Christine de Pisan.
Oh and wikipedia has a nice clear definition of second-wave vs. first-wave:
First-wave feminism refers to a period of feminist activity during the 19th and early twentieth century in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. It focused on de jure (officially mandated) inequalities, primarily on gaining women’s suffrage (the right to vote).
The term first-wave was coined retroactively in the 1970s. The women’s movement then, focusing as much on fighting de facto (unofficial) inequalities as de jure ones, acknowledged its predecessors by calling itself second-wave feminism.
ETA: of course the whole "wave" business can get a bit messy when you look at what these writers actually said. There's actually plenty of stuff written about the politics of personal relations in the so called "first wave". So it's not necessarily a very helpful label.
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Up Front: Say When, in reply to sally jones,
The Subjection of Women , the 1840 feminist treatise by arguably the most important feminist of the first wave, John Stuart Mill.
Actually, it was 1861, published 1869, according to wikipedia. And if you want to look at first-wave feminist treatises, it's hard to go past Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman from 1792.
And Sojourner Truth's Ain't I A Woman? speech from 1851.
ETA: I'm not saying JSM, and a number of other men, haven't made valuable contributions to feminist theory, politics, and debate, but I wouldn't give them more importance than the women who have done so. Not wanting men to speak for women has been a key issue addressed by feminism!
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Up Front: Say When, in reply to ,
Patriarchy is the system of males being privileged over females: it's what feminism aims to overthrow. Analogously, socialism aims to overthrow class privilege. The wikipedia page on patriarchy explains in more detail.
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I think enough has probably been said here about labels, but I just had one thing to add: seems to me there's no label that can take the place of a proper conversation about anyone's views. If I say I'm a feminist, I don't expect that label to magically inform you of all my views on gender and power, it's only a place to start talking about those things. Yes, I believe in equal rights and opportunities for everyone regardless of gender...but exactly what I mean by that, and the particular issues I'm passionate about, you'll have to talk to me to find out. No one with any sense expects all feminists to agree, or even necessarily have much in common except the basic aim of gender equality. But diversity among feminists and feminisms doesn't make those terms meaningless.
And crikey, if we want to change the world, we have to work together. When I see a post like that recent one of Maia's on The Hand Mirror, it makes me feel sad and hopeless. When feminists viciously attack other feminists over trivialities, patriarchy wins.