Originally published at
Venus Pudica
ManifestA: young women, feminism, and the future
By Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards
Published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000
$15.00
I'm a . . . power, postmodern, Girlie, pro-sex, Prada, academic, gender, radical, Marxist, equity, cyber, Chicana, cultural, eco, lesbian, Latina, womanist, animal rights, American Indian, Indian, international, diva, Jewish, Puerto Rican, working-class, Asian-American, philanthropic, bisexual, transsexual, lipstick, punk rock, young, old . . feminist."
What exactly is the current state of feminism? The media keeps proclaiming it dead (an accusation they have made for thirty years now). Second Wavers can't seem to get a lock on the newer trends. Yet Third Wavers see feminism everywhere they look. Something is rotten in the state of women's movement.
One of the hardest things to do is to meet a feminist. The most common response one gets is "I'm not a feminist, but . . ." and then a list of how the person actually agrees with the feminist politics, but refuses the label. Or, if one is so lucky to uncover someone who claims the title, often it is found with a qualifier like the ones listed above. How did this happen? When did a movement for equality become the new F-word?
Feminism, according to ManifestA, is a little bit like fluoride. Anyone under forty has grown up with it in the water. Having never known a time without feminism and its benefits, young people have a hard time identifying with the movement. Added to that, feminism was our parent's thing. It is generally accepted that children will rebel against their parents to some degree or another. Young people do not exactly see their role in life as being one of picking up where Mom and Dad left off. Preferring to go it alone, they risk losing their crucial links to women's movement. Call it the Michael Keaton Effect.
The authors acknowledge this (being young Third Wavers themselves) and wisely start ManifestA off with a chapter entitled "A Day Without Feminism." It details what things were like just four or five decades ago, and so allows the reader something to compare the everyday to. For instance, before Second Wave feminists aired the issue (and gave it a name), domestic abuse was simply an unfortunate but accepted part of life. To most anyone living now, not having those laws is unfathomable. Yet we still hear "I'm not a feminist, but . . ."
The book offers itself up to be a manifesto for young women, for the Third Wave, and for the future. However, much of the book is dominated by various women's history lessons. This point is less a criticism of the book than of the movement itself - these history lessons are crucial but currently unlearned by most people. Before young people can fully be prepared to move ahead, they must become intimately acquainted with the past. That is something that youth is notoriously bad at doing.
Not that media, or many of our elders, have been much help. The media, mostly run by men and completely dominated by patriarchal ideas, has never offered feminism a hand up. Anti-women bigots like Pat Robertson or Rush Limbaugh get airtime and along with it, the ability to frame debates and cast feminists off as "feminazis." If Rush or his ilk really think suffrage for women, equal pay, or equality under the Constitution is such a bad thing, let them say it straight out in plain language, not hide behind poorly conceived and hateful stereotypes.
I cannot say that ManifestA is a good primer for feminism, or even for Third Wave feminism. It is written for an audience at least somewhat familiar to the terrain. However, the language is clear, the authors provide plenty of definitions, and they list scores and scores of other books, authors, and events, and various other feminist causes. It often works like a good compendium of feminist happenings. I would certainly recommend it to anyone interested (as it is incredibly well put together and insightful) but would rather see it taken as part of a series of feminist literature than as a single, stand alone guide.
Following a theme of women's literature, ManifestA is very much a reflection of the women who wrote it. One author was a former editor for Ms. magazine; the other is a current co-editor there. Their view is one from the elite circles of New York. They go to pains to point out their small town mid-western roots, but that image is shattered when they describe their friends who come over for a dinner party (co-workers from Ms., a Good Morning America correspondent, a host of Pure Oxygen on the Oxygen network, and Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of Prozac Nation). While purporting to be a voice for Third Wavers everywhere, ManifestA stays resolutely incestuous within the New York journalist scene. I point this out more as a fact than a fault. Every book has up sides and down sides, and this book has many more ups than downs. The authors write from their perspective, but it is important as readers to read from as many other perspectives as we can.
Feminism comes in all shapes and forms, but can mostly be narrowed down to the personal and the political forces (of course, they intermingle constantly). According to ManifestA, the key to feminism is activism. They promote what they call "autokeonomy," or the placing of one's self into the community. Activism is to be seen "not as a choice between self and the community but as a link between them that creates balance." It is that balance that creates real feminism. One can not simply enjoy the benefits of feminism and so call oneself a feminist. One must also identify with the politics that garner those benefits.
That is what the "I'm not a feminist, but . . ." crowd fails to grasp. One day we could wake up without any fluoride in the water. Everything we have taken for granted would have to be fought for all over again. That feminism is often on the defensive, that the apparent apathy of our generation is the first thing we must overcome, is what makes a manifesta like this necessary.
Feminism is nothing if not an answer to a challenge. It sees an injustice and then imagines a solution and puts that solution into practice. The authors end with a challenge, and leave the reader to put it into practice -
Dare to say, "I am a feminist."