three waves of feminism, the 1960’s was the second.

1st Wave Feminism:

‘sexism was coined by analogy with the term racism in the American civil rights movement in the early 1960s. Defined simply, sexism refers to the systematic ways in which men and women are brought up to view each other antagonistically, on the assumption that the male is always superior to the female‘‘sexism was coined by analogy with the term racism in the American civil rights movement in the early 1960s. Defined simply, sexism refers to the systematic ways in which men and women are brought up to view each other antagonistically, on the assumption that the male is always superior to the female‘

2nd Wave Feminism

‘the feminist literary criticism of today is the product of the women’s movement of the 1960’s’

(Barry 2017:123)

Indeed feminist critical thought became much more prominent and pronounced during the counter cultural movements of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, which heralded, among other changes: the facilitation of of birth control and divorce, the acceptance of abortion and homosexuality, the abolition of hanging and theatre censorship, and the Obscene Publications Act (1959) – which led to the Chatterly trial. Nevertheless,

‘all this should not be seen as a straightforward displacement of dominant conservative attitudes‘ .

(Johnathon Dollimore 1983:59)

3rd Wave Feminism -Raunch Culture

‘rebellion of younger women against what was perceived as the prescriptive, pushy and ‘sex negative’ approach of older feminists.’ (344)

Barker and Jane (2016 p. 344)

by Naomi Wolf , it was a response to the generation gap between the feminist movement of the 1960’s and ’70’s, challenging and re-contextualising some of the definitions of femininity that grew out of that earlier period. In particular, the third-wave sees women’s lives as intersectional, demonstrating a pluralism towards race, ethnicity, class, religion, gender and nationality when discussing feminism.

• emphasis on the differences among women due to race, ethnicity, class, nationality, religion
• individual and do-it-yourself (DIY) tactics
• fluid and multiple subject positions and identities
• cyberactivism
• the reappropriation of derogatory terms such as ‘slut’ and ‘bitch’ for liberatory purposes
• sex positivity

‘a product of the unresolved feminist sex wars – the conflict between the women’s movement and the sexual revolution‘ .Ariel Levy (2006:74)

‘Raunch culture is the sexualised performance of women in the media that can play into male stereotypes of women as highly sexually available, where its performers believe they are powerful owners of their own sexuality’Hendry & Stephenson (2018:50)

Intersectionality:

‘In an attempt to understand what it means to be oppressed as ‘a woman’, some feminist scholars sought to isolate gender oppression from other forms of oppression’. Put another way, there was a tendency to be either ‘preoccupied with the experiences of white middle-class women or to ignore completely the experiences other women’ (Sigle-Rushton & Lindström, 2013, 129)

bell hook advocates media literacy, the need to engage with popular culture to encouraging us all to ‘think critically’ to ‘change our lives’; ethnicity and race, see for example here work ‘Cultural Criticism and Transformation

Butler suggests that gender is fluid, changeable, plural a set of categories to be played out and performed by individual subjects in individual moments in time and space.

identity can be a site of contest and revision‘Butler (2004:19)