Deborah Siegel must be reading my blogs (in my dreams). She has written THE book I have been looking for about the Second and Third Waves of American feminism; the ideas, the women, the politics inside and out, and, most insightfully, their relationship to one another. This book is never fluffy, never stuffy, never sloppy, never arrogant, never a put-down, never a let-down. Okay, I got carried away with the "nevers," but I am excited about this book. This woman really did her homework and captured the WAVES.
Sisterhood, Interrupted ~ from Radical Women to GRRLS Gone Wild is divided into Mothers and Daughters with a Conclusion. That would not have been my choice, as I prefer "sisters in the family of feminists" as the Mother and Daughter relationship is fraught with too many problems but it works for her and her book. With one my very large feet in each Wave, I love both sections, in fact I never stopped grinning and cheering through the entire book.
SECOND WAVE ~ Bunnies, Steinem, stewardesses, classified ads, AH and for the brains of the operation - Millett. Our Millett ~ messing with Mailer and Miller ~ that was fun. The cover of Time and Sexual Politics predicted exponential success. For those of you who were not in the movement then, the big failures had not ruined the parade (yet). "Sisterhood was proving itself not merely contagious, but powerful." At this point the parade was just thrilling with something for everyone. Sex - we were all talking (and doing) sex. Lets teach it, lets make it safe, lets make it fun, lets do it naturally ~ Take off the heels, the bras, the crowns, the artifice and get to school, study, get a job, make money, get credit, buy a house and get me my orgasm. Oh you girls ~ lets coalesce and knock 'em out. We wrote, we got published, we opened bookstores, we met and talked and it was wicked good fun because it was working.
And, if you were in the thick of things, you recall, instead of moving the circle out, we turned to the middle and got lost wanting to be right, to be understood, to be uniform (looks ridiculous now - doesn't it?). You should do this or that, you should be this or that. You should be pure - with the personal and the political; one in the same. Chapter 3, The Battle of Betty. She needs and deserves an entire chapter, tho the play on Peoria was too much for me. If you want to understand Feminism of the Twentieth Century, you have to know the evolution of Betty and Siegel captures it entirely. The Feminine Mystique has been so pivotal, it is renamed, reformed and refashioned, (see The Feminine Mistake). And if you are old enough, you know what the term "Lavender Menace" can do to a room of feminists. As Rita Mae Brown said, "Lesbian is the one word that can cause the Executive Committee [of NOW] a collective heart attack." Oh those were the days!
On to the Third Wave and, oops, my older sisters seemed to have lost their sense of humor somewhere between Barbie and blame. "To this brazen new wave of reclaimers, the feminist cult of victimology was the new evil." These smart, educated, liberated younger sisters proclaimed that the personal was no longer political - personal is F'ING PERSONAL! Marches, classes, politics won the right to wear lipstick and heels and NO MEANS NO. Oh, oh, and they don't like the f-word. Man, that's gotta hurt.
It seems to me that all of the conversation about how we don't need feminism anymore is that the Third Wave doesn't know how big the dreams were that the Second Wave had in mind. The Second Wave rode a gigantic tsunami of the '60s. The Third Wave, "grew up in the cynical 1970s, came of age in the conservative 1980s and came to activism under Clinton which may have felt less hopeful than their foremothers about their ability to effect lasting outside change."
All in all, I love this book. I love Siegel's work. There were points I don't agree with (BTW - the ERA's deadline was 06/30/82) but this is exactly what I WANT - I want us to see that we are not the enemy and we can disagree and still get on with it. I want it all. I want the parade to include Steinem's legs, Dwokin's overall's, the academy and workers in the field, the moms and child-free, Bust & Bitch, glam and safe, walking, running, competing, marching, voting, teaching, laughing. GREEN LIGHT is my motto. Green Light them all.
Here is my favorite from the book ~ "... members of the younger generation who think they are rebelling are instead treading well-worn ground and that older women don't recognize their own progeny. The Result is nothing short of tragic: Instead of making tidal waves together, we splash about in separate pools." (emphasis mine)