Feminism in the Light of Feminist Narratives - Essay Example

A FEMINIST NARRATIVE Feminism in the Light of Feminist Narratives Barbara Findlen’s Listen Up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation1 presentsthe views of feminist young women on everyday life in the 1990s. It is a collection of first person narratives that uses a deliberate personal-essay format. As Findlen explains, “the experiences of individual women of sexism have always been our point of entry into feminism.” The collection avoids the emphasis on white women’s experiences prevalent in the second wave writing. Rather, it reflects and explores authors’ intersectional identities. The essays pertain to engaging self-examinations often pointing to broader cultural and social problems. As a third wave work, Listen Up articulates a third wave identity that introduces readers to the third wave feminist generation alongside its problems.2 The collection is engaged in the task of consciousness-raising, and giving voice to the third wave. In this paper, five narratives from Findlen’s Listen Up are chosen, alongside relating them to how they have helped in the shaping of my understanding of feminism. These narratives are Lusting for Freedom (Rebecca Walker), Chicks Goin’ At It, (Anastasia Higginbotham), Your Life As a Girl (Curtis Sittinfeld), Youre Not the Type (Rebecca Walker) and One Bad Hair Day Too Many, or The Hairstory of an Androgynous Young Feminist (Jennifer Reid Mascy Myhre). My Own Narrative of Feminism Barbara Findlen’s Listen Up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation is able to provide me a new way of understanding women’s struggle in the third wave. My previous understanding of feminism resolves in the surge of women’s situation from their old tradition as mere caretakers of the household, denied of education and employment, and had a limited right to suffrage. Feminism had been a political idea, had always been, and still is. When women earned their right to education and employment, bid goodbye to being merely relegated to the sidelines as a mother and wife, and finally being able to vote, I thought that the woman is then free and all she has to do is to ensure that this freedom is not taken from her. However, the third wave feminism proves that the feminist struggle continues on and the issues that every female must resolve are reflected on language, gestures, and movements of people and society in everyday living. My perceptions about the third wave feminist struggle made a shift or would I say, an improved turn over the course of the semester as aided by the authors of Listen Up. Not being a racist, but my previous consciousness on feminism has always been directed towards Europe, the proponent of feminism, neglecting or putting into sidelines the other female experiences in other parts of the world. The feminist struggle is not limited to a certain race, social class, or ethnicity, but encompasses all these and Findlen’s Listen Up was able to reiterate this point. It means that the feminist struggle is a worldwide struggle, and as we, who dwell in a post-industrial and democratic nation still experience it, the more that other societies do – the pre-industrial and the non-democratic ones. The change of my perception took place through the many enlightening works in Findlen’s compilation. Curtis Sittinfeld’s Your Life as a Girl reiterates the class patriarchy imposed on the movements of a woman in her social gamut. Sittinfeld states that every feminist that has come out of the closet patriarchy is putting herself into the risk of re-identification, perceived as something negative as soon as she finds herself a feminist.3 I would say that this negativism happens as such upon the woman’s consciousness of her own being, in her growing skepticism about society and begins to have a battle against its language, its laws, its norms, and its general order. As Sittinfeld clarifies the role of language in the placement (or displacement?) of the woman in society, I have affirmed that language sets divisions and categories, supporting the dissection of the gender and the pervasion of a social class edification. “The boys have words for you: cunt, ho, bitch. They say feminist like it is a nasty insult.”4 A man is called neither a bitch nor a slut, and a lot more terms associated only to women. Urging her to behave appropriately puts the man and the woman in separate continuums in which the former is permitted and the latter is restrained. I would say that the initial wave of feminism was concerned with issues that are outermost overt – women’s lack of education, not being permitted to be employed or to join political associations - and it is to this wave that I was focused when the word ‘feminism’ crops up. However, authors of Listen Up like Rebecca Walker (You’re Not the Type) was able to convey the covert conduct of society and norms on the treatment of women. Her experience as a young mother, for example, was almost a struggle to fit in and be oneself, according to herself and not to the dictates of society. A woman’s struggle to fit in despite society’s compulsion of her to stay in her proper place is seen in Walker’s lines: "I had a baby at sixteen. Im a young mother with alternative body piercing that attract questions in the mall."5 Stereotyping, a covert social encounter, which the woman faces, lies in her misplacement in a compulsive order that urges her to behave properly. I have thus, viewed that there should be no rules for social proper behavior to which a woman should subscribe since they only limit her capacity and the dimension that she can reach, alongside restraining her to express herself. Seeing a new worldview reinforced by Listen Up enables me to examine my social environment – seeing women with multiple partners as sluts and hating them for it while praising and heralding the male counterparts requires a new way of looking at the genders. The third wave is different from the overt cry for fair gender treatment, which can be invoked by law, since its basis is commonly overt. How can a woman invoke legally that people should not frown at her when she decides to marry a person of her same gender or get pregnant and still go to school in hip-hop clothes? There are some gender-based biases in not permitting women on these things, more than saying “she should not wear that blouse that shows a little of her stomach because she’s pregnant with a baby,” but because she has been stereotyped, categorized, placed in a division by female social standards. Society puts the female being in a category that allows to speak a language and restrains her from speaking some, which, when she speaks, will be punished for it. Rebecca Walker6 clearly sets this in her narrative when she said, “If you are a girl, sex marks you.” In a capitalist society like ours, the woman has been relegated to a mere commodified being, adjudged as to how she performs in bed. “By the time I was eighteen I was fluent in the language of sex and found myself in restaurants with men twice my age, drinking red wine and artfully playing Woman."7 In this lines by Walker, people might see the girl as a cheap being, a dirty woman, a “slutty” one. On the other hand, if it were a man sharing the same experience, he would just simply be regarded as a gigolo or an active playboy, and these terms are not a bit near to being cheap and slutty. Imagine a man saying these lines is just a common thing:” By the time I was eighteen I was fluent in the language of sex and found myself in restaurants with men twice my age, drinking red wine and artfully playing Woman." Why it appears differently to women is because social perception declares that a ‘decent girl’ is a marriage material, and those who have indulged in some naughty experiences are considered having a dark past, a closet, and a skeleton that must be kept, discarded, and be ashamed of to her [future] children. I remember about a post that says it is improper for girls to say “fuck” and only men are supposed to say it. This is a simple example of linguistic division of which the males appear to want to have domination over them, while females were restricted and relegated to certain social positions. Though appearing insignificant and not of much value, this example reflects gender biases and gender inequality through language. Walker8 clarifies a woman’s need for a wider social female arena that concerns purely an exclusive female issue when she states, “[Young women] are growing, thinking, inquisitive, self-possessed beings who need information about sex and access to birth control and abortion.” However, in some societies, they are restrained to have access to these information, but pursue a social trend of seeing them as sex objects. "If you are a girl, sex marks you." as Walker asserts. A gender-based consciousness enlightens women about this restraint, but those who continuously live without knowledge of this social happening are intimidated by their initial skeptic questioning about gender biases. As Anastasia Higginbotham said, “I was born a girl in a society that devalues women and girls,” but I would not let that intimidate me, as other feminists do not, and I proclaimed myself feminist.”9 This is I think the very core of the concept of feminism, more apt than just simply expressing oneself to go on a tattoo and without being frowned for it. This very concept lies in the ability to assert the woman’s place in the social order, and not allowing oneself to be intimidated by counter-assertions due to her sufficient knowledge of the foundations of social inequality and of class-based inequality that contribute to the existing gender-based biases. The third wave feminism may be described as a finishing-off in the gender issues, not as drastic as early feministic works has pursued, resulting to what women enjoy now which are already made secure by legislation. I have discovered that there are many reasons as to why women come to terms with feminism, as Jennifer Reid Mascy Myhre puts it. "Some of us come into feminism because of abuse, harassment, eating disorders. I came to feminism because I hated shaving my legs."10 Funny, but mine is perhaps this course itself. This is how I was able to be properly introduced to feminism. This has helped in my further understanding of the field, which can aid in skeptically identifying the symptoms of gender-based biases and unfair gender treatments that place women in the sidelines or relegate them in a lower status. Word count: 1,765 References Dicker, Rory and Piepmeier, Alison. Catching a Wave. Northeastern University Press, 2003. Findlen, Barbara. Listen Up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation. Seal Press, 2001. Higginbotham Anastasia. Chicks Goin’ At It, Listen Up; Voices From the Next Feminist Generation, ed. Barbara Findlen, New York: Seal Press, 2001. Sittinfeld, Curtis. Your Life As a Girl,” Listen Up; Voices From the Next Feminist Generation, ed. Barbara Findlen. New York: Seal Press, 2001. Walker, Rebecca. Youre Not the Type, ed. Barbara Findlen, New York: Seal Press, 2001. Walker, Rebecca. Lusting for Freedom, in Barbara Findlen, ed., "Listen up: Voices From the Next Feminist Generation. Seal Press, 2001.  Read More