Wiki-feminism is true mistake

Feminism is too complicated an entity to be characterized from a few quotes pulled from a Google search or a Wikipedia entry, as fellow columnist Ashley Reynolds represented it in her column, “The feminist mystake,” which ran last Friday. 

Feminism is a political movement, an artistic movement, a philosophical movement and a lifestyle. 

While feminism has roots that go as far back as Ancient world, we generally begin with first wave feminism, an Anglo-American movement in which women — as well as some men — in the United Kingdom and the United States fought for women’s suffrage.

They argued that women, being morally superior to men, should have the right to vote, based upon the Victorian notion that women (at least middle class and upper class women) were the moral gatekeepers of the family. 

However, the movement in each country was different and contained many diverse voices within. 

Although my colleague referred to American first wave feminists Susan B. Anthony, Victoria Woodhull, Alice Paul and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she left out other feminists from that era, such as former slave Sojourner Truth, and birth control advocates, including anarchist Emma Goldman and socialist Margaret Sanger. 

And, while many first wave feminists were anti-abortion rights, those such as Goldman and Sanger saw the need for sex education and birth control in order to prevent abortions from occurring.

Second wave feminism was not hijacked, as Reynolds claims, from the first wave; it evolved out of the first wave, as well as the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements of the 1950s and 1960s.

While second wave feminism — as well as the third wave — are associated with pro-abortion rights, it is unfair to assume that all second (and third) wave feminists are pro-abortion rights or pro-abortion. 

Pro-abortion rights and pro-abortion are also not the same thing.

Second wave feminism evolved because getting the vote did not make women equal members of our society. 

Feminists such as Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem fought for abortion rights, an equal rights amendment to the constitution (which failed), equal opportunities for women in higher education (Title IX), equal opportunities for women to pursue careers if they so chose, equal pay for equal work (which still has not happened), equal treatment in the military (also not happened) and other issues. 

Second wave feminism had successes and failures, as well as voices at each extreme of the debate. There were feminists who wanted to take over the world, but many others just wanted the chance to be considered an important contributing member of society outside of the domestic sphere. 

Third wave feminism continues to respond to first and second wave feminisms by including a greater diversity of voices, such as those of Bell Hooks and Gayatri Spivak, who look at the way race, class, religion and sexuality join with gender in systems of oppression. 

This wave is also more global, examining the roots of oppression, the types of oppression and possible solutions to the problem of oppression not only in the United States and Europe, but also in countries in Africa, Asia and South America, that were left out or underrepresented in earlier feminisms.

Now, after giving a too brief and too summarized history of feminism, I want to share something with you: Every feminist comes from a different background and has different priorities, although similar goals. 

As a feminist, I prioritize issues of violence against women, whether that violence comes in the form of rape, the misuse of vaginal words as insults, molestation of children, female circumcision, domestic violence and sexual harassment. 

Every one of the issues I listed is a problem in the United States. 

Female circumcision happens here, but there is more than one way to mutilate a vagina. It can happen through unwanted sex, molestation, sexual harassment and even the misuse of language. 

We have plenty of violence issues to deal with in our own back yards, without the full equality women in many European countries have because of the equal rights’ amendments that did pass. Rape, domestic violence and molestation — particularly of teenagers — are serious problems in this country. 

Until I live in a world without these forms of violence, I will fight them and support abortion rights, stricter laws against rape, sexual abuse and domestic violence, as well as the way language is used to teach women to feel ashamed of their bodies and their sexuality. 

I am just one voice in a movement of many fighting for the equal rights few women of the world have. 

And for your information, we do not have them here, yet, Ashley. I invite you, and anyone else who is interested, to engage in the real feminist tradition, rather than the nineteenth century ideas you used in your column to push your own anti-abortion rights agenda.