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“Intellectual Antecedent” my ass

Jill

Must older feminists shit on third-wavers to make their point?

Katie Roiphe’s work interests me because she is typically cited as one of the intellectual antecedents of third-wave feminism (along with Camille Paglia and Rene Delafield). Like Roiphe, many third-wave writers use first person narrative to communicate their ideas.

Katie Roiphe’s work is not considered to be an intellectual predecessor to any version of third wave feminism I’ve ever come across — except by conservative a-holes who call themselves “feminists” in order to up their credibility when they attack feminism. Like, you know, Katie Roiphe (for those who are lucky enough to be unaquainted with Roiphe, she was the author of the primary work of date-rape apologia, wherein she insisted that date rape didn’t exist and that dumb bitches just regretted sex and cried rape).

Sounds just like most third-wavers you know, right?

As for using personal narrative to make a point, it wasn’t third-wavers who coined “the personal is political.”

Now can we please talk about the great contributions of some actual third-wavers instead of continuing to discuss the decade-old work of a rape apologist in feminist clothing?

28 thoughts on “Intellectual Antecedent” my ass

  3. From Ann’s comment:

    I guess Jill thinks Jennifer Baumgartner and Amy Richards are “conservative a-holes who call themselves “feminists” in order to up their credibility when they attack feminism.” Go figure.

    No, I don’t. I think Katie Roiphe is a conservative a-hole who calls herself a feminist to up her credibility. Richards and Baumgardner argue that feminism should be open to the kinds of challenges that Roiphe poses, and that young women challenging feminism is a feminist act in and of itself. That’s a bit more nuanced than “Katie Roiphe is one of the intellectual antecedents of third-wave feminism.”

    Notice also that Baumgardner and Richards have to defend Roiphe because other feminists couldn’t stand her.

    I hear what Bridget is saying, and the rest of the post is fine. I just dislike seeing third wave feminism being defined for me, especially when the definition is a condescending and inaccurate one. I also wonder why anyone still cares about Katie Roiphe’s book, which was riddled with inaccuracies and has been generally written off as polemic crap.

  4. You know, this is a completely meaningless statement:

    she is typically cited as one of the intellectual antecedents of third-wave feminism (along with Camille Paglia and Rene Delafield).

    There’s no subject in that sentence. Typically cited by whom? By people who identify as third-wave feminists? By hostile second-wave feminists? Really: inquiring minds want to know.

  6. many third-wave writers use first person narrative to communicate their ideas.

    Um, anyone ever read the original Our Bodies, Ourselves? The Boston Women’s Health Collective was so important, in part, because of its members’ innovations in using their own stories to illustrate information about health, medicine, and the medical establishment. And, I assure you, they were VERY second wave.

    Sally, you’re absolutely right, and that’s why I always try to teach my students to avoid the passive voice. When you use the passive voice, you erase the subject (and responsibility for whatever action the writer is describing). My favorite example: African people were enslaved. Anyone notice something missing there?

  7. except by conservative a-holes who call themselves “feminists” in order to up their credibility when they attack feminism.

    I don’t know if Jill falls into this category, but often feminist decry the unwillingess of women to call themselves feminist when all it is is the “radical notion that women are human beings.”

    but then a “conservative” calls herself a faminist and we scream bloody murder. I see a contradiction.

  8. I don’t know if Jill falls into this category, but often feminist decry the unwillingess of women to call themselves feminist when all it is is the “radical notion that women are human beings.”

    but then a “conservative” calls herself a faminist and we scream bloody murder. I see a contradiction.

    Oh, I don’t think that’s a contradiction at all, particularly when Roiphe insists on redefining “feminist” to the point that it ceases to be a useful term. Roiphe is a talented polemicist who wrote one of the worst books — in terms of its evidence and in terms of quite deliberate intent — of the last twenty years. I’d blame it on her youth, but Jill is the same age now as Roiphe was then, and she’s got a far more credible and thoughtful style.

    You can be a feminist and criticize other feminists. Folks do it all the time. But your feminism is called into question when you continue to stand behind a book that made your career, a book that denied the reality of sexual violence and dismissed the very real, very painful stories of countless young women. It’s tough to call someone who does that a feminist.

  9. Usually when someone (conservative or liberal) is advocating for mass starvation, we do take issue with it. I don’t see how that’s related to feminism. :p

  10. Did someone misunderstand the post? Bridget was commenting on Roiphe’s hypocrisy.

    If I stood on my head and turned around seventeen times and looked at the post through a keyhole with special 3-D glasses, I still couldn’t see how Bridget was mounting an attack on third-wave feminism. She was criticizing Roiphe.

  11. It helps if you actually read all the sentences in a paragraph. Particularly the ones right next to each other. Like this:

    “Like Roiphe, many third-wave writers use first person narrative to communicate their ideas. It seems a bit odd, then, that Roiphe objected when the tables were turned, i.e., when Pollit asked readers to imagine their personal (hypothetical) narrative.”

    The whole point is that Roiphe has made a point out of first-person testimony, and so it was hypocritical of her to object to Pollitt’s personal-testimony comeback.

  12. The whole point is that Roiphe has made a point out of first-person testimony, and so it was hypocritical of her to object to Pollitt’s personal-testimony comeback.

    Well, yeah, I get that. But that wasn’t the point of my post — my point was that her swipe at third-wavers was unnecessary and inaccurate. As I said in my first comment, the rest of the post was fine.

  13. Did someone misunderstand the post? Bridget was commenting on Roiphe’s hypocrisy.

    If I stood on my head and turned around seventeen times and looked at the post through a keyhole with special 3-D glasses, I still couldn’t see how Bridget was mounting an attack on third-wave feminism. She was criticizing Roiphe.

    Yes, I get that. She was (rightly) criticizing Roiphe — but in criticizing Roiphe, she says that Roiphe was a predecessor to third-wave feminist thought. That’s my issue.

  14. I can understand why you might initially take offense at the reference; no sane person wants Katie Roiphe (or Camille Paglia for that matter) referenced as an “antecedent.” It pisses me off every time Paglia is described as a feminist at all. Whatever side she’s on, it’s not mine.

    But I think — I really, really think — that Bridget was just saying, ‘I read these morons because they get a huge amount of media attention, justly or not, as the “third wave.”” Certainly they sell themselves that way. And they do get attention. Just the other day I came across another Salon article about Roiphe’s new job and blah blah blah blah, has feminism’s enfant terrible grown up, etc. In other words, I think Bridget was citing the popular estimation of these women, not endorsing them — much less trying to take a swipe at real third wave feminism.

  15. Just an editorial note: Those passive constructions do indeed have a subject. They don’t have an agent.

  16. I’m with Bridget on most of her post — and I hope she meant that she reads these morons because other people consider them third wave. But she doesn’t identify who cites Roiphe as an antecedent to third-wave feminism, and then she follows with a declarative sentence expressing her opinion about the writing style of third-wavers. That’s why it seemed to me that she was expressing her own opinion of third wavers. I would be very happy to be wrong.

  17. But your feminism is called into question when you continue to stand behind a book that made your career, a book that denied the reality of sexual violence and dismissed the very real, very painful stories of countless young women. It’s tough to call someone who does that a feminist.

    i read the morning after as an attack on the infantilization of women, such as a woman can’t consent to sex while drunk, but a man can. or that a woman can be coerced into sex verbally, and this is rape.

    In this sense rophie is conservative as one of the right/left debates centers around free-will vs. social determinism. it mimics the fascinating debate about porn, as sex-workers have found a voice on the Internet and claim that they choose to strip or do porn flicks, only to be told that they do this b/c of a lack of choices due to the economic/social infrastructure. kinda mimicking marx’s argument that the working class suffer from false consciousness.

    anyway, the point is, i see it as all a debate within feminism.

  18. Manju, I hear you — but what was overtly an attack on infantilization and a stirring defense of women’s agency was a none-too-subtle suggestion that women who genuinely feel victimized are denying their own part in what happened to them. When you do that with rape, you’re victim-bashing in a very ugly way. Agency matters, but when you claim that women are capable of exercising the agency to always avoid predatory a-holes, you’ve crossed a line.

  19. This is a mild diversion, but it would clear up a confusion I’ve had about “third-wave feminism” for a long time. I’ve sen the “third wave” referenced in at least two ways–both breaks from the second wave, but distinct from each other:

    a) The way it appears to be represented here: a feminism that sees some things that second-wavers would term objectifying as empowering (at least when done with a conscious intent to subvert), looking for innovative ideas to undermine patriarchy or turn it against itself (“if I’m going to be sexually objectified anyway, I might as well get men to pay me for it”), etc..

    b) An anti-essentialist critique that takes aim at second-wavers for having a unitary idea of “woman” that is basically White, straight, and middle-class. This group seeks to focus on the pluralities of women’s experience and insure that intersectionality issues are not submerged when talking abut “the” female experience.

    I’m probably butchering these somewhat, but hopefully you can figure out the camps I’m referring to. Is only one of these truly “third-wave”, and I’ve mistakenly associated the term with the other? Or are they linked in a manner I’m not seeing? Or is the term “third wave” really used to refer to both without linking them?

    Thanks.

  20. Just to respond briefly to the inciteful point made in posts 4 & 6 about using the passive construction to make the oppressing agent vanish from view: this was discussed not too long ago in an interesting post (“passive aggression”) at hoyden about town. http://lauredhel.livejournal.com/73459.html

  21. i read the morning after as an attack on the infantilization of women, such as a woman can’t consent to sex while drunk, but a man can. or that a woman can be coerced into sex verbally, and this is rape.

    If a guy tells me that he’ll kill me if I don’t have sex with him, that’s not rape? After all, all he did was coerce me verbally.

  22. If a guy tells me that he’ll kill me if I don’t have sex with him, that’s not rape? After all, all he did was coerce me verbally.

    you got me there

  23. I consider myself a 3rd waver and I don’t take offense to the Feminist Law Professors’ blog post.

    “Many” does not mean the same thing as “all.”

    “She is typically cited as” does not mean the same thing as “(I believe) she is.”

    Maybe I’m missing the rest of the conversation, the context, and so I’m applying a too generous interpretation, but on it’s face the given quote is not “shitting on third-wavers.”

  24. David Schraub, the simplest definition of the Third Wave is that it is the era of feminism chronologically following the Second Wave. Third Wave feminism made its debut around 1990 (with roots back in the 80s), and represents those women who came of age in the late 80s, the 90s, and now.

    The distinctions you gave are often cited as defining, but — as a certified old bat who became a feminist in 1972 — they are mistaken. Second Wave feminism may have looked white and middle-class, but in fact there was absolutely a powerful interest in understanding femaleness as it existed all over the earth, in a plurality of social systems and cultures, and locating the commonalities between male dominated societies and how they interacted with other oppressive divisions (class, race, etc.). That’s why so many Second Wave feminists became anthropologists and cultural historians and sociologists, so we could learn about global femaleness and sort all that stuff out. Young women today have the advantage of that knowledge that we worked to gain (which male anthropologists and cultural historians and sociologists certainly weren’t looking for).

    There was also in the Second Wave a diversity of opinion about whether hitherto oppressive forms could be co-opted, etc.

    And the essentialism was never a universal opinion — I have never been an essentialist in my life, ever ever ever.

    In other words, Second Wave feminism was a great deal more diverse than it probably looks now from the hindsight of history. There was a whole gamut, from lesbian separatists to Earth Mother Essentialist types to intellectuals who believed (as I do) that gender was wholly a social construct, etc., and of course the great majority of Second Wavers who hadn’t thought about any of those things but who just wanted women to have a fair break in life, goddamnit.

    Diversity is also a hallmark of Third Wave feminism, and in fact I would say it is THE hallmark. Third Wave is all about diversity, because the relatively unifying goals that we were focused on a few decades ago — basic legal stuff — have been accomplished (though those achievements continue to be at risk). Almost every intellectual position that is true of some Third Wavers is not true of other Third Wavers. And there is also a greater diversity of people involved, with a plethora of sub-groups of feminism devoted to particular group’s experiences — all of which is also the result of Third Wave being the chronological follow-up to Second Wave. It’s a natural and healthy development, exactly what should happen as a movement matures and broadens.

    I think it is not only inaccurate but counter-productive to oppose Second Wavers and Third Wavers as differing philosophical schools. We’re waves, not schools; the sense of sequence is important. There are Second Wavers still around who agree with everything Third Wavers say and always have; to them the notion of Third Wave being philosophically different doesn’t make sense. “Hey, I’ve always thought that! I’ve been saying that since 1975!”

    On the other hand, there are strains of thought, and perhaps a style of discourse, that are far more prominent in Third Wave than in Second Wave. The reclaiming of pornography, to take a notorious example– though it’s worthwhile to remember that at least some Second Wavers always thought porn was okay or could be okay, and there are plenty of Third Wavers who are as virulently anti-porn as Andrea Dworkin.

    The only differences that I think really hold up are the ones related to the fact that Third Wave exists in later cultural moment. I’ve already noted several facts, but another one is that feminism is no longer a marching/sign-waving/local meeting kind of movement. That makes a huge difference. That means the fight is more individual with a lot less social support.

  25. And the backlash! How could I forget the backlash? Actually I never forget it; it’s like death and looking at the wall your train is about to smash into. You just have to look away most of the time so you won’t go nuts.

    Third Wavers have such a difficult row to hoe because of the backlash. Second Wave feminism, at least in the 1970s, enjoyed that euphoria of being the New Truth. Ironically so, since most of the population was still functioning with pre-feminist values (and oppressions) — nevertheless, it was like the civil rights movement in the 60s. Racism was still overbearingly blatant, but being against it was the Right Thing To Do.

    Which is why the right-wing backlash devoted so much energy to trying to destroy feminism. And they’re still at it.

  26. “Must older feminists shit on third-wavers to make their point?”

    What makes you think Bridget Crawford is an “older” feminist?

    Try unpacking the baggage of that word as used in this context and see what gets revealed at the bottom.

  27. I’d noticed they’d been taking a number of unnecessary pokes at 3rd-wave feminism. For instance previous posts suggested 3rd-wave philosophy condones spouse battering and coerced prostitution.

    But based on a comment by another FLP blogger, Ann Bartow, I think it’s a case of mistaken identity. Professor Crawford appears to be confusing 3rd-wave feminism (an actual wave of feminism that does not condone battery and trafficking) with “post feminism” (a term of art for such anti-feminists and non-feminists as Roiphe, Ann Coulter, Wendy Shalit, and Britney Spears.)

    If Crawford *really does* mean to indict actual 3rd-wave feminists like, oh, say, Jill, then she should be much more direct about it. But again if she’s calling Roiphe or, say, Paglia, 3rd-wave feminists then I think she’s just using inaccurate terms.

    figleaf

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