[Music] Welcome to Discourse, the grabbing back podcast where we talk about all things, feminist theory and activism. I'm your host, Kayara, and this is episode one of our brand new season. For those of you who've been with us since the beginning, thanks for coming back. For those who are totally new, hey, welcome! Come take a seat at our imaginary kitchen table. We're doing something new and releasing a full season of episodes, articles and content on our site. We are so super excited that you are joining us. Each month we'll be focusing on a key idea or theory, releasing one podcast episode, chatting to academics and activists, one article, and a few definitions for our brand new, deeply-throking feminist dictionary. We'll be looking over the next six months at intersectionality, colonialism and socialism. So pretty like an easy topic, so little. This month we're thinking about waves. What are they? And why they important? Yadda, yadda, yadda. There's so much to back in here that to kick off the new season, we're giving you a double amy and have split this conversation into two parts. You lucky ducks. I'm super excited to be joined by the amazing Julien love who you'll meet in just a moment. But before that, I wanted to give a shout out to my amazing teammates at grabbing back who make all of this magic happen. And to plug that if you want to get involved, we are always looking for new people. So drop us a DM on Insta or Pee Puss an email at
[email protected]. We would love to hear from you. Right, okay, that's enough of me for now. Let's hit what the brilliant Julien has to say in part one of our waves episode. [Music] Dr. Julien love is a sociologist who specialises in gender studies. Her previous research has included a qualitative study of abortion narratives and a review of barriers to sexual violence support for LGBT people in Brighton. She is based at the University of Sussex and she is, I'm very excited to say, joining us. Now, hello, Julien, how are you? Hi, good. You're thanks for having me. Thank you for coming on. We're very, very excited to chat today about waves of feminism, what they are, why they're important. All of that good juicy stuff. And I hear from one of our team members that you are incredibly knowledgeable in all of these. Okay, well, that's there's no pressure. Zero pressure. But because we all do very well under intense time pressure, I thought we could start with a quick fire questions round. So there are no wrong answers, I think. So, just whatever comes to your mind first, just say the answer. Okay, are you ready? Yes, I'm ready. Favorite era of feminist writing? The 80s, the 1980s. Brilliant. Name a feminist movie. Magic Mike XXL. Which I can explain more if you wish. I can just leave it there. We can come back to this. No, I think we can. Yeah. A woman or trans person from history that most want to meet. I just listened to a podcast about Catherine Parr. He was Henry the sixth final wife. I would love to chat to Harishie sent for the interesting. I was brilliant. Yeah, I've heard that reading her confessions is quite, quite amazing. Okay, finish the sentence. The patriarchy is on its way out. Socialism is the only way forward. And feminism comes in. Feminism comes in many different packages. Oh, interesting. Interesting word, choice of packages. Yeah. We might talk more about that as we go. I make some sound like GIF, you know. Yeah, yeah. Or kind of marketing packages. Okay, yes, the rise of capitalism and feminism coming together. Yeah, interesting. And what I'm, I first want to hear about your magic mic, XXL. Yeah, so this, everyone who knows me, I've already bored them about this extensively, but I went to see Magic Mic, XXL, which is the second in the Magic Mic franchise. Not expecting anything other than watching. It's a story about male strippers. So I was just expecting to just be mildly entertained. And I ended up thinking it was one of the best films that I've seen in maybe the last decade. So it's very, it's very, the reason I think it's feminist is there's the kind of obvious suffers level, which is it's male strippers. There may be inviting the female gaze. If that is something that even exists in cinema. But then the actual story is basically about male friendships. There's no real romance in the film. There's no kind of romantic kind of storyline that's like, that kind of everything else gets sidelineed on. And there's loads of really interesting scenes where men are talking to each other about women in their lives in a really feminist way. And I don't think it was intentional. So I really recommend this film to everyone. It's really great. Well, I have to give it a watch. If I've never seen it, but I do love Channing Taser. He's great. And he's, yeah, he's really good in this. There's lots of, it's funny, it's heartwarming. I think it's a genuinely feminist film without even necessarily trying very hard to be. Oh, so that sounds amazing. Well, perhaps this is the third or fifth. We have to tell me in a minute, fifth wave feminism. Yeah, just magic, Mike. Maybe that's sixth wave feminism. It's just nice and nice. And then it adds loads of exes. Exactly. Yeah, that could be the foundation of our new film. I think if we give Channing a call, I reckon he'd be up for it, you know. Okay, so sadly, we're not going to be watching a film today. Although that would be a cool thing. But we are talking about the waves of feminism. So this is our first episode in our brand new season. We're talking about lots of different things. And at the team grabbing back, we thought we'd kick off with waves. And it was really interesting. Because one of our team members, Shadantana, said, hang on guys, what are the waves of feminism? And we had five or six amazing feminists on the call, very knowledgeable. And we all came up with a very different answer about what they are, when they are, what they mean. So I'm hoping you can help us figure out a little bit. I'll try my best. Well, I think it's kind of good to set it up that way actually. Because I think generally the way that we talk about the history of feminism and really specifically the history of feminism in the west or in the anglosphere, like the UK and the US, really is where we're talking about when we talk about these waves. It's on one hand quite a useful way to cement in your head what kind of issues were central to women's politics at different times in history. But in other ways, the waves can be not very useful in thinking about the way that feminism progressed. So traditionally, the first wave tends to be identified as that kind of time in the kind of 19th and early 20th centuries when women were advocating for women to have the vote and to own property and basically to be legally equal to men in those respects. So you have the suffrage movement, you have people like Mary Wallstrand Kraft. I think some people describe that as the first feminist text, a vindication of the rights of women. So a lot of the work of that wave was legal reform. So granting women rights that men had. And you can kind of put an easy end point to that movement in maybe like the 1910s or 20s when women did win the vote. That tends to be when we kind of end the first wave. That's really interesting actually because I think normally we tend to think of it as happening in the 1910s and 20s the first wave not going all the way back to kind of Wollstrand Kraft and you know that kind of being pre almost I think she's often called a kind of proto feminist or pre feminist. She's early writers but you're saying that would be our first wave. And then women get the vote well in you know some countries if they're white but we'll leave that to the side for now. Well actually no let's not leave that to the side because that is yeah because I think that's a really important thing to know is that you know even if we just look at the UK some women were granted the vote in 1918 and I think it wasn't until 1928 that all women were granted the vote. So there are kind of divisions very kind of stark divisions in society that feminists at the time weren't particularly interested in so class divisions whether or not you owned property kind of questions around race and racial equality yeah these were very not thought they were not kind of folded into these feminist campaigns at all. So I think that's a really important thing to point out actually about the first wave. Yeah and of course there's arguments still that you know not everyone has the vote today so for example members of a loved prison population are not granted the vote if I've got that right and that's I think
kind of not really a campaign we were a lot about but I know is something that some feminists are advocating for obviously there are you know kind of a lot of refugees are not granted the vote so there's still big debates well perhaps big debates in small areas around votes as well yeah for sure yeah the idea that we have had a universal suffrage since 1928 is just not right and again if you think about the history in the US the kind of women's movement that was happening at the same time there and stratifications along the lines of race were obviously really stark in terms of who was granted the vote and who wasn't so yeah so this idea that we have universal suffrage from that point onwards is quite a naive way of looking at history I think okay so that's our first wave all right that's come come and gone quite quite a good while ago now and then we have the second wave which is my I wanted to say favourite but it was such a problematic time I think there was such good work done but obviously a lot going on there that we're still reckoning with how would you characterise a second wave so the second wave I think if you said second wave feminism to most people who who are kind of familiar with feminist politics or history you think 60s 70s you think about kind of women's liberation the women's liberation movement you think about women burning bras even though they didn't actually do that but that kind of kind of symbolic gesture of discarding the kind of physical and metaphorical strictures that women experience at the time so you have feminists talking about reproductive rights so advocating for abortion contraception and talking about violence against women so seeing sexual violence and domestic violence as things that society and the state should be really concerned with you know policing and punishing you know equality within the workplace sexual harassment in the workplace the kind of slogan that's always associated with a second wave is the personal as political isn't it so this idea that you know like parodynamics in your personal relationships you know between men and women and between you know women themselves they are not distinct from the realm of politics you know feminist politics penetrates into all of those all of those areas penetrates is maybe an interesting choice of words that has an amazing choice of words I know as soon as I said it I was like why did I say penetrating so second wave very interesting and actually we have one of the second wave kind of a big second wave feminist coming on to the podcast in a few months and we do our socialism and feminism podcast we've got Sheila Roboff on coming on to talk about things so that's really interesting but yes it is I think the personal as political is a really interesting slogan which I think maybe gets perhaps adopted in a very capitalist way today where we kind of think oh you know if I'm a feminist if I do the right thing if I say the right thing if I am perfect at feminism if I have perfected it then maybe that's it but that's not really what they meant by it is it no exactly yeah in fact not at all I think the the personal is political I think it was a recognition that a lot of the time kind of classic political theory tended to see those realms of existence as really separate so like politics is things like redistribution of wealth and what men do in the workplace and when they go and make legislation in parliament and then stuff like domestic labor or sexuality in relationships those are cultural issues and they're just things that politics doesn't really have any domain over and the state shouldn't be concerned with so it was a yeah it was a statement really about bringing those spheres together and actually not just thinking about well if I do something in my personal life and I am a feminist that means it's a political action but rather thinking yeah if my husband is violent towards me that is something that many women experience and there is a reason for it there is a kind of patriarchal assumption that men are the heads of the household and their family like that's what the personal is political means and that's why in the second wave you saw a lot of consciousness raising groups so women coming together to kind of give testimony to share their experiences of things like rape and domestic violence and abortion and really the kind of point of those consciousness raising groups was to politicise women to say look you're not the only one experiencing this as a class of people perhaps women are experiencing this and if we all did something about it then society would have to change. Sorry I just want to pause you there I think that's the interesting things you've brought up but I just wanted to just sit for a minute with some of those some of those really big ideas and unpack them just a little bit more so obviously we're talking about this idea the personal is political but I was kind of realising as you were talking that actually what you're saying is political is not what a lot of people would think is political so how are we refining politics I think a lot of people would hear politics and they'd think oh that's Boris Johnson and Keir Stammer and House of Commons or wherever their you know parliament is and that's voting but that's not what we're talking about at all we're talking about something very different to how would you characterise politics as a word? That's a really good and hard question I think I guess politics fundamentally is about who gets what why when where and how so whether that is who has power or who has particular resources and those questions can't only be answered on the level of yeah people making legislation or kind of talking in parliament and so if you think about something like power and how it's diffused throughout society you can think about power in the context of your personal relationships and I think actually a lot of people do think about that even if they don't name it as a kind of political way of thinking you know why is it that maybe my male partner always talks over me why is it that he kind of yeah makes sexist jokes or at his male friends and then I just have to sit there and laugh at it like why is that that seems like a real power imbalance the idea is that yeah those things are political and also the kind of actions that you might take to resist those things or to change them can also be political so I guess that definition of politics is a much more it's a less top-down kind of model isn't it it's an idea that power and politics is diffused throughout people's personal lives and goes all the way up to the structural as well um so yeah so I think yeah that's a good thing to point out that that definition of political is maybe different from how other people would define it yeah reminds me a lot of a quote that I always used to attribute to a genoma nae I later found out is not written by genoma nae um I think it's oscoiled uh but I might have to check in on that but it's everything is sex except sex which is about power right which I think fits in kind of interestingly obviously we can get into discussion about sex gender differently um but I think that possibly fits in here especially when you're talking about personal relationships of people and partners um okay so that's that's politics that's our second wave and we've got the new mentioned consciousness raising which is one of my favourite activities um but again for people who haven't heard of this where did it come from well very important question I think actually where did it come from um and what is it and why was it so important for the second wave well I think my understanding is that it was that a lot of the second wave feminist politics particularly in the UK or in Britain was really influenced by socialist and Marxist politics and a quite um important concept in kind of Marxist politics is this idea that um the kind of proletariat they've kind of people who don't have power in society and the ones who are exploited the most have a false consciousness they aren't able to see that they are being oppressed that they're being exploited and they just kind of look at their conditions and think of them as normal there's lots of reasons why people feel uncomfortable with that so the idea that everyone is just a bit of a you know just ignorantly walking around and not looking at their lives until somebody comes along and says hey look there's a patriarchy over here that you need to be concerned with um but I think that's where this idea of consciousness raising comes from that sometimes it takes someone or a group of people to point out to you these conditions that you live in you don't have to accept them they're not natural they are created by the kind of social order that we are in and that social order can change um so I think that's the kind of genesis of consciousness raising in the feminist movement it's that same idea that if you can bring women together and expose the facts that things like violence against women they're not just individual
acts that people perpetrate against their partners for no apparent reason. They are part of a much broader structural problem of male violence being condoned and women kind of being seen as, you know, deserving violence. Then you can begin to build a political movement. So it's almost like a radicalisation, a kind of explicit like radicalisation of people by bringing them together and showing them these connections. Okay. And so at this point in our waves feminism is very left wing, would you say it's kind of connected? Yeah, right. So I think it's, I think it is important to kind of put it in its political context of the rest of politics happening in like the 60s and 70s. So a real kind of burgeoning kind of movement on the left in the UK and in the US and elsewhere. burgeoning meaning kind of growing and exploding out. Yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And so yes, I think feminist politics at this time was really, really entrenched in leftist politics. So all these discussions around, yeah, like how should the world be formed? I almost idealistic utopian thinking around kind of Marxist politics and even things like, you know, the summer of love and that kind of 60s free love kind of vibe as much as that wasn't necessarily part of feminist politics. I think feminist politics was shaped by it as well because suddenly you have women saying, oh hang on. So now it's okay to shag anybody, right? But we're still getting pregnant and then being told that we can't have abortions. That sounds like not a very good deal for women. So all of these kind of, yeah, kind of leftist political movements happening. They're all happening at the same time. And so that second wave was very much influenced by it. And so that sounds wonderful and amazing and like a great party and surely they must have solved all of the issues of inequality. That's when it's amazing. Right is there and absolutely nothing wrong with it. I imagine. Am I correct? Sure. And we can stop the podcast there because we want everything in the 60s and 70s. No, obviously not. So obviously you do have important wins in that time. So things like, you know, abortion being legalised in the UK, in the US, that happened during that time. You see things like domestic violence shelters being set up, you know, and the state recognizing violence against women as a crime that is punishable through the criminal justice system and so on. However, there's lots of things that people look back on in the second wave with a great, with a critical eye, let's say. And so one of them is, and you don't even have to wait very long to see these critiques emerging. One of them is about race. So you have black feminists, someone like Bell Hooks, writing in the 80s. So still when the kind of second wave was happening and pointing out, like black women are really being left out of this movement for lots of different reasons. We're really just talking about white women's liberation here. So I think white, second wave feminist politics tended to see men as the oppressor, just, you know, men are the oppressor and women are the oppressed class. And one thing that black feminist pointed out was that it's important to think of the coalitions that, for example, black women have with black men. If you think of the way that the second wave feminists wrote about the family, they tended to say things like, well, the family is the sight of oppression because that's where women begin to be socialised into their roles as like child bearers, child re-errors. They're the ones that are being told they must stay at home whilst the kind of male bread when it goes out to work. And so the family becomes this sight of oppression to be unpicked and revolutionised. And some black feminists said, well, the family doesn't necessarily feel that way. So black women who might find it a refuge from racism in kind of the wider world, maybe the family can be a sight of a very different type of experience if you are not a white woman. And so these kind of critiques are made basically from the moment that I think the second wave began. And the other kind of important thing, I think, is people do point to second wave feminist writers. They were often explicitly transphobic, sometimes homophobic. I think one thing that's interesting to bear in mind, as we're in a time where transphobia is a really kind of present issue for feminism right now. And I'm sure we'll get on to talking a bit about that later. Yeah, it's really striking when you look back to the 60s and 70s. And maybe a little bit before that as well and the lead up to the second wave of feminism. Gay women were seen by some people in the feminist movement as a threat. These kind of women that are here to be kind of predators, they're here to kind of they want to just find people to have sex with and they're not really women. Those kinds of discourses were present in the kind of second wave. And they're the same kind of discourses they get leveled still at trans people today in the feminist movement from some of course. That's really interesting. Because I think I've heard a lot about those discussions being, well those discourses being really present in wider society. But you're saying that was something that was within the second wave feminist circles as well. And so the feminist circles weren't in this utopia. They were not immune certainly to racism and also to homophobia at the time. Yeah, which is really interesting because I think there are lots of people and groups that we can point to in the second wave where queer and lesbian women were at the center of those of that politics. You do see people talking about things like political lesbianism during this time. So the idea that if you are a woman who's attracted to women, you might make the decision I am only going to have relationships with other women. I'm going to distance myself entirely from men because I don't need to have romantic or sexual relationships with men because I've got women. So you have this kind of quite radical lesbian politics going on very much fused with like second wave feminist ideals. But then you also have in some quarters of that same second wave movement people talking about it was called the Lavender Menace gay women coming into the feminist movement. So yeah, so those spaces like you say they're not immune from inequalities that are present that even some people within the movement were critiquing in it in wider society. So there was homophobia. There certainly was transphobia so real gatekeeping around two counts as a woman and who is not. And yeah, problem is about race and class, you know, some people have pointed out that some of the kind of concerns of the second wave movement were really middle class women's concerns. So yeah, so it's not all it's not all yesy. Yeah, certainly. So if we did just having a quick look back now, we've come a huge way from kind of Mary Wollstonecraft to was 18 mid late 1800s through to 1960s 70s 80s with our second wave. What are some theorists that you would or just maybe one or two that you would pick out that are really interesting to look at from these times? Well, I think so yeah, Mary Wollstonecraft if you read the of indication of the rights of women and kind of view it like you said is this kind of proto feminist text that gives you an idea of a starting point or what we would now think of as a starting point. I think then moving forward, Betty Frieden is often cited as an interesting person to read. So her writings, her most famous writings were basically about the way in which women I think her she was writing in like the 40s and 50s. So this is pre second wave. She was writing about the ways in which women are completely socialised to be housewives, to stay at home, to be in charge of the domestic sphere and are horrifically depressed as a result. So it was a real kind of she was attempting to expose this idea that women are just happily enjoying their roles as kind of the the domestic goddesses. And her famous quote was of course an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor. Right, right. So that's a that's an idea of what she was kind of advocating. And also, again, you can see the critiques of some of her work is obviously not every woman had the luxury of just being a stay at home wife. The idea that kind of women until the 60s didn't work outside the home is of course ridiculous like walking class women have been working forever. But still heart I think her work is quite interesting to read. And then kind of moving forward, I guess classic second wave authors, you have people like Jermaine Greer, Andrea Duworkin, Catherine Mayhew. It's all incredibly well. Right. So they're interesting to read because they some of those people are still around and they're still
writing now and they're still commenting on feminist politics and so yeah if you choose someone someone like Jermaine Greer so her kind of famous bit was called the female unit she is still well maybe not so much anymore but certainly ten years ago she was still kind of being wheeled out as a feminist voice on TV and kind of espouse some really quite explicitly transphobic politics and I think since then I don't really see Jermaine Greer being wheeled out any water to speak for the feminist movement which gives an indication perhaps of how feminist politics has moved on since Jermaine Greer was writing but yeah reading people like her like Andrea Dwarke and like Shlumuth Firestone there kind of there's lots of ideas in their writing that I think have real application now but there are just ways in which they're writing that might feel a bit alien if we're reading them from a kind of you know from 2022 so things like second-wave feminists were really concerned with things like pornography and the way that people like Catherine McKinnon and Andrea Dwarke and right about pornography is basically that it is violence against women it's rape and it's exploitation from the view of a feminist in 2022 who might be more familiar with arguments around kind of pro-sex work politics and seeing sex work as work that might feel incredibly outdated so they're all really interesting but when you read them perhaps set them in their time set them in their context very useful at the time but maybe consider them consider them now and of course if there is there are things within that that might trigger you then then be very careful about how you approach that I think Amia Shrenivason wrote a really good chapter in her latest book right to sex on the porn wars as they were called which is which is fascinating and I think it's really interesting how we've got this discussion of these feminists today right this is this is not a long time ago right this is this is not a hundred years ago when many got the vote but not all it's not that long ago right what is next the third wave are we in it has it happened what is the what happens next of the wave story yeah well this is where things get complicated that is all we have time for today so we're going to have to answer that question in part two if you're interested I know you are then head over to part two it should be live now wherever you find this and you'll see you there ♪ Oh yeah ♪ ♪ Now don't try to change me ♪ ♪ You're away ♪ ♪ You don't let's all leave ♪ ♪ Don't time it down ♪ ♪ I will never smile ♪
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