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Bustin' Big Bad Feminisim
By Holly Morris
Feminism has always been my companion. As a teenager it came unnamed
and as instinct and told me that I needn't be confined to the narrow definition of "girl" nor contort myself to find or please a boy. Feminism
joined me at college where it acquired its own vocabulary. I held that
new language closely and pulled it out often to explain, argue, and
defend what I'd always known. An entity then, it slept with me there,
grew and kicked.
Now I look into my backpack less and less for theories and support.
Feminism has become a familiar light that spreads possibility and hope
onto a world full of not-yet pro-woman constructs and institutions. I
get cranky when people, or the media, tell me I don't exist and deliver
"young women are apathetic and nonpolitical" soliloquies.
" I am a young feminist and I'm pretty sure I exist. I am not a walking oxymoron. Nor
am I alone. I am part of a new generation of feminists-not better, just different."
We were raised on pop culture-Get Christy Love, Charlie's Angels, and David Cassidy (his first time around)-and pop tarts, not pop political
movements. We know computers, not the Dewy Decimal System, divorce not devotion-Email, gang-rape, rage, websites, and The Webster Decision,
androgyny and AIDS, Bikini Kill and the battered women's movement. We
know there is not one way to be; we embrace multiplicity and contradiction. We know about harassment and rape. We know how empowering fun can be. We know that feminism lets us know ourselves; and we know it has a history and a legacy. It used to wear petticoats but now it can wear ripped jeans and publish 'zines, or it can wear reinforced powersuits that bust through glass ceilings. It can be heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual, and most importantly, just plain sexual. Somewhere within this splintered kaleidoscope we exist.
Young feminists of today find few answers in party-line dictates. We
came of age under the deadening conservatism of a 12-year Republican
administration. We watched Iran-Contra, a major crime against the constitution of the United States, be swept under the rug by that same
generation who got righteous about a jowly man's paranoid antics and a
few minutes of erased tape. We also know that part of that same righteous slice of constituency elected Ronald Reagan-the so-called Reagan Democrats.
Right now there's much hoopla afoot about second and third wave
feminists. (Def.: The "second wave" being women now in their forties
and fifties and who were active in the '60s, the "third wave" being the
aforementioned apathetic crew (us) whose existence is frequently called
into question.) The second wave was part of a youth culture that was
against the "conflict" in Viet Nam (bad) and for Civil Rights (good).
Their's was a time when right and wrong, good and bad seemed clear enough
to act upon. Anti-establishment behavior was righteous behavior. The
philosophical battle lines of the movement at that time were well-drawn
(pornography: bad!; potlucks: good!).
Feminists of any and every generation reflect their time and culture,
their class and race. Their battles are dictated by a political climate, their style emerging from an environment. There are salient generational differences among feminists. Young feminists sometimes squirm under the constraints of perceived party-line politics. We don't ask that the "second wave" to step aside; nor do we want to join the line dance of yesteryear; we simply want to busta big bad feminist move to our own beat. Embracing and capitalizing on generational diversity within the movement will ensure that we remain organic and vital. The unique energies, attitudes, and styles of young women must become a part of the feminist continuum-lest our internal differences be appropriated as a weapon of divisiveness by those who'd like to do us
in.
If we fail to define ourselves others will be more than happy to do it
for us. Today's spin doctors of the airwaves and slick magazines create
divisions among us-and negative mainstream stereotypes for the rest of
the world-by tagging us with inane labels such as "Do Me Feminists"
(Esquire). Feminists were bra-burning, granola dykes in the '70s,
power-hungry, ruthless business women in the '80s and now, in the '90s, we
are lipstick lesbians, do-me feminists.
Young feminists today sit atop a landfill's worth of struggle, history,
and accomplishment built by women who came before us. In our hip
pockets we carry a kaleidoscope of perspectives, histories, images of
mothers and grandmothers and sisters and we carry a legacy of political
movements. We sift through the dissonance of our time and culture, one
that makes few promises, one that dismisses our ironic sense of futility
and our succinct language as "slack." We gaze across at the next
millennium, and start to rock to the beat of the coming rrrevolution.
Holly Morris is the former editorial director of a feminist book
publishing company, and is the editor of two anthologies about fishing
by women writers, Uncommon Waters and A Different Angle. She is the
producer and host of the television travel-biography series
"Adventure Divas" and website, www.adventuredivas.com.
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