- Feminist = a political position
- Female = a matter of biology
- Feminine = a set of culturally defined characteristics
Third-wave feminism is an iteration of the feminist movement. It began in the United States[2] in the early 1990s and continued until the rise of the fourth wave in the 2010s.[3][4] Born in the 1960s and 1970s as members of Generation X and grounded in the civil-rights advances of the second wave, third-wave feminists embraced individualism in women and diversity and sought to redefine what it meant to be a feminist.
Third-wave feminism began in the early 1990s, coined 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.
According to Barker and Jane (2016), third wave feminism, which is regarded as having begun in the mid-90’s has following recognisable characteristics:
- an 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
- reappropriation- take back
Forth wave
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’
As feminists came online in the late 1990s and early 2000s and reached a global audience with blogs and e-zines, they broadened their goals, focusing on abolishing gender-role stereotypes and expanding feminism to include women with diverse racial and cultural identities.[12][13]