I Haven't Read "The Bell Jar"...

A while ago a friend asked me who my favourite feminist was. As I raised my fingers to type a whole stream of influential names from across history, I drew a complete blank. The only person who came to mind was my school friend and fellow angry feminist. It was pretty embarrassing to realise that I knew almost no famous feminists, aside from “trans-women-are-not-women” Germaine Greer, who is hardly an ideal role model.

Upon hearing that I was interested in writing feminist poetry, my English teacher asked me if I had read Sylvia Plath, or Denise Levertov, or Simone de Beauvoir. Again with more than a tad of embarrassment, I admitted I have not.

Sylvia Plath

It felt like society was glaring at me, “how dare you call yourself an educated feminist when you don’t even know the foremothers of the movement!” And within educational circles, or any circles for that matter, a lot of emphasis is put on garnering someone’s “level” of feminist identity from their knowledge of specific famous feminists’ theories and writings. The thing is – with all due respect to Sylvia, may she rest in peace – this mind frame is pretty antiquated. New wave feminism exists on a whole other level, and it’s infinitely better than the old models.

With the internet age and easy access to information and global communities, feminism is thriving in cyberspace. Connecting with the female experience in different countries and cultures has created a new generation of feminists who are extremely aware of the intersection between race and gender, and the anonymity of the web allows previously silenced voices like those of trans and gender diverse folk to surface. We no longer stand at bra-burning rallies learning feminist theory from a woman with a megaphone, we learn from scrolling through Tumblr, reading comment wars that open discourse on feminist issues, or following blogs (!!). And this has allowed us to become so much more diversely educated, as our feminist classroom literally encompasses the entire world and all the possible experiences of oppression.

On the other hand, we can no longer identify specific leaders of the movement. Feminist teachers are not a handful of people, but a thousand Tumblr urls, Twitter accounts, YouTubers and anonymous bloggers. We don’t associate certain theories with particular people anymore, because in a world of increasingly liberated minority voices, the different priorities and theories within feminism are constantly multiplying. (Which is a good thing by the way, read this).

However people still continue to prioritise the study of feminist academia, usually nothing much more recent than the 1970’s. Certainly, it is extremely interesting to research the history of feminism and to study the process of female liberation across the 20^th century. But for the sake of being a fully educated, knowledgeable, active third wave feminist, it is simply not necessary to be an expert on outdated theories and theorists. Without an iota of sarcasm, I can say that Tumblr has all the resources necessary to become educated on intersectional feminism in the modern day.

And yet, this is not acknowledged or respected by most of society. Why? A few reasons:

• Racism. Most big feminist names from ye olde times were white women, and it served the white-dominated society well to ensure that if the women’s rights movement was getting momentum, at least it aimed to predominantly serve white people. In the white-supremacist world we still live in, it is no surprise that these women are the ones whose names continue to be associated with respect, academia and noble history, while women of colour continue to be left almost entirely out of the picture.

• Elitism. Second wave feminism, white people, wealthy people, etc. tend to be quite elitist when it comes to education and academia, as these areas have historically only been available to the privileged as a means of oppressing the disadvantaged. And the privileged within feminism (white women, wealthy women, yada yada yada) also benefit from keeping feminist theory within the circles of the highly traditionally academically educated. Naturally, the idea of feminism being accessible, and hence empowering, to everyone is terrifying to the privileged… and so society attempts to quash this progression.

• Sexsim. I mean, anything trying to disrespect feminism is intrinsically linked to the sexist social conditioning we all experience.

“Bad feminism” has nothing to do with the amount of reputable literature you have read, or your academic opinion on Susan B. Anthony. The accessibility of modern feminism has not only enriched the content we are able to learn, but broken down much of the harmful, oppressive history of previous feminism.

Obviously my dream is to be a famous feminist who will go down in history, but they hardly exist anymore…

It’s for the better J

Leave thoughts and comments below,

Hannah