A few days later, her friend Julie
Burchill penned a piece in The Observer
in which she claimed that Moore
had been forced to quit the social
networking site Twitter by a ‘gaggle
of transsexuals’. Burchill’s piece was
deeply offensive and transphobic –
in one particularly callous aside, she
says ‘they’re lucky I’m not calling
them shemales. Or shims’. Lynne
Featherstone, MP for Hornsey and
Wood Green, called publicly for her
to be sacked. The Guardian, sister paper
of the Observer, quickly removed
Burchill’s article from their website.
On one hand, this looks like just
another media spat; yet on the other
it offers a window onto a whole
range of issues that are central to
contemporary feminism. At the core
of the Moore/Burchill Twitter-storm
was a sense that these prominent
feminists were out of touch with contemporary
feminism. Many online
Feminism: A FourthWave?
E
arlier this year, commentator
Suzanne Moore found herself
at the centre of a media storm.
The reason: she had written a piece in
the New Statesman arguing that women
feel guilty if they do not conform
to a socially sanctioned, ideal body
shape. So far, so uncontroversial,
but unfortunately, Moore’s choice
of imagery was, at best, careless: she
likened this perfect body to that of a
‘Brazilian transsexual’. The remark
was considered offensive for a number
of reasons: it suggested that trans
women could not be considered
women, whilst callously mocking
the trans community as a whole. (In
this article, I use the term ‘trans’ to
refer to those who feel excluded by
traditional, binary understandings of
gender.) Even the reference to Brazil
was misguided – Brazil has one of
the worst records on transphobic
hate crime in the world.
The internet has emerged as an increasingly important space for feminist activists. Are we witnessing a shift
from third- to fourth-wave feminism? Ealasaid Munro examines the history of feminism and looks at what
contemporary developments might mean for feminist politics.
commentators castigated Moore
and Burchill for calling themselves
feminists and writing in support of
feminist issues while embracing such
exclusionary language. Moore later
rejoined Twitter, and issued a nuanced
and well-researched apology
– informed, she said, by exchanges
with her critics – but Burchill did
not. Contemporary feminism is characterised
by its diversity of purpose,
and amid the cacophony of voices it
is easy to overlook one of the main
constants within the movement as
it currently stands – its reliance on
the internet.
Feminist Waves
As the contemporary feminist
movement becomes both more
visible and more fragmented, there
has been a resurgence of interest
in earlier waves of feminism. The
Channel 4 documentary Secrets of a
Suffragette aired earlier this year to
mark the centenary of Emily Wilding
Davidson’s fatal trespass onto
the racecourse at Epsom in 1913.
The documentary analysed historical
footage of the collision between
Davidson and the King’s horse, and
concluded that Davidson was an accidental
martyr. However, it brought
home to a wider audience the injustices
visited upon women well into
the 20th century as regards property
ownership and suffrage. This was
feminism’s ‘first wave’.
With the vote won for all women
over 21 in 1928, the feminist movement
gradually turned its attention
to women’s inequality in wider society.
Second-wave feminists coined
the phrase ‘the personal is political’
as a means of highlighting the impact
of sexism and patriarchy on every
aspect of women’s private lives.Lynne Featherstone MP called for Julie Burchill to be sacked after her transphobic comments.
Reuters
Contemporary
feminism is
characterised
by its diversity
of purpose, but
the reliance on
the internet
is a constant
22 Political Insight
Prominent feminists such as Betty Friedan
(see ‘Betty Friedan – Hero or Villain?’) also
made clear that feminism in its second wave
was about breaking down gender stereotypes,
thus emphasising that feminism was
of importance to men as well as to women.
Yet second-wave feminists treated
women as a homogenous group, without
paying attention to the many axes of difference
that cleave apart the singular category
of ‘women’. bell hooks’ seminal Ain’t
I a Woman noted the devaluation of black
femininity, and the sidelining of women of
colour within the feminist movement. This,
she argued, reinforced racism and classism
within the movement, and the only ones
who suffered were women themselves.
hooks’ book was pivotal in the development
of the third wave of feminism, as it drew attention
to the need for multiple feminisms.
Third-wave feminism has been heavily
influenced by academic investigations
of queer theory. Queer theory posits that
gender and sexuality are fluid categories,
and do not easily map onto binary understandings
of ‘male’ and ‘female’. Increased
understanding of bisexual and trans identities
characterise the third wave – although
as the Moore/Burchill furore shows, this is
an ongoing process, with the increasingly
visibility of trans people within feminist
activism prompting a concurrent rise in
discrimination, most notably from within
the radical feminist movement. In a more
general sense, third-wave feminism has
been critiqued for its focus on individual
emancipation, in contrast to the ‘personal is
political’ debates of the second wave. While
the third wave’s focus on micropolitics is
in keeping with a well-documented shift
towards individualism in the latter years
of the 20th century, some argue that this
can be depoliticising, shifting the onus for
change onto the individual – thus making
wide-reaching change more difficult to
effect.
Fourth-wave Feminism?
Many commentators argue that the internet
itself has enabled a shift from ‘third-wave’
to ‘fourth-wave’ feminism. What is certain
is that the internet has created a ‘call-out’
culture, in which sexism or misogyny can
be ‘called out’ and challenged. This culture
is indicative of the continuing influence of
the third wave, with its focus on micropolitics
and challenging sexism and misogyny
insofar as they appear in everyday rhetoric,
advertising, film, television and literature,
the media, and so on.
The existence of a feminist ‘fourth wave’
has been challenged by those who maintain
that increased usage of the internet is not
enough to delineate a new era. But it is
increasingly clear that the internet has facilitated
the creation of a global community
of feminists who use the internet both for
discussion and activism.
According to #FemFuture: Online Feminism,
a report recently published by Columbia
University’s Barnard Center for Research on
Women, females aged between 18 and 29
are the ‘power users of social networking’.
According to this research, the number of
women using digital spaces is increasing.
There is evidence, too, that the uptake of
new technologies such as Twitter is growing
in geographical areas where women
still face social injustices – in Turkey, for
example, women make up 72 per cent of
social media users.
Several large corporations have fallen
foul of the speed with which feminist campaigns
can garner support on the internet.
Earlier this year, Facebook was forced to
confront the issue of gender-based hate
Betty Friedan – Hero or Villain?
American author and activist Betty Friedan (1921–2006) was one of the most famous second-wave
feminists. She was the author of a series of books, including The Feminine Mystique. Widely credited
with kick-starting the second wave of feminism, this book was an examination of‘the problem that
has no name’, or, the increasing alienation and unhappiness felt by American housewives in the
post-war boom years. In 1966, Friedan formed the National Organization for Women – a women’s
rights organisation that sought to narrow the equality gap between the sexes.
Friedan was undoubtedly a passionate advocate for women’s rights, and drew in large numbers
of male ‘allies’ via her elaboration of the ways in which traditional gender roles restrict men as well
as women. Yet she was also deeply transphobic and – certainly in the early years of her activism
– homophobic as well. As a white, middle-class suburban housewife, Friedan also epitomised the
(often unwitting) racism and classism of the second wave, yet her popularity arguably acted as a
catalyst for the development of those diverse feminisms that constitute the third wave.
American author and activist Betty Friedan was one of the most famous second-wave feminists.
Corbis
The internet has created
a culture in which
sexism or misogyny
can be ‘called out’
and challenged
23September 2013
speech on its webpages after initially suggesting
that images of women being abused
did not violate their terms of service. In the
UK, websites such as The F Word and The
Women’s Room, and online campaigns
such as The Everyday Sexism Project and
No More Page 3, have attracted thousands
of supporters who find that the internet
works both as a forum for discussion and
as a route for activism.
Whether or not internet campaigning
actually enables change is a contested issue.
There is concern that online discussion
and activism is increasingly divorced from
real-world conflicts. ‘Slacktivism’ is a term
used to describe ‘feel-good’ campaigns that
garner plenty of public support – such as
a petition circulated via Facebook – but
that do not necessarily address pressing issues.
So while research points to the fact
that feminism is being reinvigorated by
the internet, whether or not this is leading
to transformative political action is hotly
debated.
Julia Schuster’s work on women’s feminist
engagement in New Zealand notes that
online activism is often the preserve of the
young, and that due to the closed nature of
some social networks, feminist discussion
is often ‘hidden’ from those who are not
sufficiently networked. For Schuster, this
may create a divide between young feminists
and older activists, as the new wave
of feminists unwittingly hide their politics
from their older peers. Many of those academics
in a position to research and publish
on feminism belong to this older age group,
hence academic feminism is arguably guilty
of failing to properly examine the shape
that the fourth wave is currently taking.
Perhaps the shift to internet activism
reflects the continuing lack of political
representation in western democracies
– at Westminster, for example, of the 23
seats around the coalition government’s
Cabinet table, only four are held by
women. Research conducted by the University
of Liverpool in the run-up to the
2010 general election in the UK found that
female politicians were far less likely to be
featured in major news outlets than their
male counterparts, and that discussion of
female politicians’ physical attributes often
overshadowed discussion of their politics.
Understanding Difference
One of the key issues for contemporary
feminism is intersectionality – the idea
that different axes of oppression intersect,
producing complex and often contradictory
results. As bell hooks showed, the experiences
of working-class black and white
women in the US are insurmountably different
– yet each belongs to the category
‘woman’. Academic feminists have been
comfortable with the idea of intersectionality
since at least the 1980s, when prominent
third-wave feminists such as hooks, Gloria
Anzaldua and Audre Lord spoke out about
women of colour being sidelined within
feminism. These feminists undermined the
idea that gender alone was a sound basis for
identification.
In an effort to draw attention to these
axes of difference, contemporary feminists
advocate several tactics, including
the much-maligned practice of ‘privilegechecking’.
As a tactic, privilege-checking is
about reminding someone that they cannot
and should not speak for others. Of course,
individuals speak from a very specific
A petition calling for a reversal of a decision to remove women from bank notes was signed by 30,000 people. In July, new Bank of England Governor
Mark Carney announced that Jane Austen would feature on a new series of £10 notes. Press Association
24 Political Insight
viewpoint – what Donna Haraway
calls ‘the view from somewhere’.
The phrase ‘check your privilege’
was born on the internet, and young
activists who grew up communicating
via internet chat rooms appear
to have considerably less trouble
with the phrase than older feminists.
As Sadie Smith has noted in
the New Statesman, however, ‘check
your privilege’ is often abused as a
phrase – used as a means of deflection
rather than with any hope of
understanding or rapprochement.
The emergence of ‘privilegechecking’,
however, reflects the
reality that mainstream feminism
remains dominated by the straight
white middle-classes. Parvan Amara
interviewed self-identified working
class feminists for a piece published
on internet magazine The F Word
and noted that many of the women
she spoke to found themselves excluded
from mainstream feminism
both on the internet and ‘in real life’.
Amara notes that many women tend
to encounter feminism at university.
Women who do not go on to further
education face a barrier when
attempting to engage with those academic
debates that drive feminism.
New Languages
The realisation that women are not a
homogenous group has brought with
it a set of new terminologies that attempt
to ensure that those who hold
a given identity are not spoken for, or
carelessly pigeonholed. For newcomers,
the vocabulary can be dizzying,
from ‘cis’ (a neologism referring to
those individuals whose gender and
sexual identities map cleanly on to
one another) to ‘WoC’ (‘women of
colour’) and ‘TERF’ (‘trans-exclusionary
radical feminists’). On the
internet, you may have your privilege
checked, or in extreme cases you
might be ‘doxed’ (have your personal
files hacked, and distributed – the
term ‘dox’ is derived from the .docx
file format that much virtual data is
stored in). ‘Doxing’ has been used
predominantly by anti-trans activists
to release information about the
identities of trans people.
The proliferation of these new
technologies – most notably the internet
– points to how central they
are to contemporary feminist debate
and activism. Terms such as WoC,
cis and TERF are invaluable given
the 140-character limit imposed by
Twitter, and lend themselves to the
practice of hashtagging, an online
practice that allows information to
be quickly retrieved and linked.
Conclusions
Barely a year goes by without the
death-knell being sounded for feminism,
but such widespread negativity
is unwarranted. Whether or not we
are living through a ‘fourth wave’
of feminism, it is clear that women’s
understanding of their position in
the world and their political struggles
is changing. With more and
more young feminists turning to the
internet, it is imperative that academics
consider the effects that new
technologies are having on feminist
debate and activism.
While controversy abounds concerning
the delineation between
second-, third- and fourth-wave
feminism, it is clear that several
key issues animate contemporary
feminism. Intersectionality and the
exclusionary nature of mainstream
feminism remain a real concern.
The political potential of the fourth
wave centres around giving voice to
those women still marginalised by
the mainstream.
Selected References
hooks, b. (2007) Ain’t I a Woman: Black
Women and Feminism. Boston, MA:
South End Press.
Martin, C. and Valenti, V. (2012) New
Feminist Solutions Volume 8. #FemFuture:
Online Feminism. New York, NY: Barnard
Center for Research on Women,
Columbia University.
Ross, K., Evans, E., Harrison, L., Shears,
M. and Wadia, K. (2013) ‘The Gender
of News and News of Gender: A Study
of Sex, Politics, and Press Coverage of
the 2010 British General Election’, The
International Journal of Press/Politics, 18
(1), 3–20.
Schuster, J. (2013) ‘Invisible feminists?
Social media and young women’s
political participation’, Political Science,
65 (1), 8–24.
Ealasaid Munro is a postdoctoral researcher
in the Centre for Cultural Policy Research
at Glasgow University.
The funeral procession of Emily Wilding Davison, after she was killed by throwing herself under King
George V’s horse at the Epsom Derby.
PressAssociation
The realisation
that women
are not a
homogenous
group has
brought with
it a set of new
terminologies
25September 2013