Feminisms, First, Second, and Third Wave

A logic of “feminist waves” structures the ways in which Western academic and non-academic feminists tell stories about their past and present. The notions of “first-wave,” “second-wave,” and “third-wave feminism” are common currency in feminist discourse. In spite of this, waves are generally reckoned to constrain how we plot and plan feminism. The wave-logic is argued to be a source of processes of inclusion and exclusion within feminism. Second-wave feminists object to the strategy of the first feminist wave (“equality feminism” is exchanged for feminisms of “difference”) and the results of equality feminism are questioned. This is because the rights gained had not changed the minds and practices of men and women. The conflict-based models of equality feminism were also said to be based on a model of kinship relations that does not do justice to the experiences of black and lesbian women. The relation between mothers and daughters has different features in black and lesbian communities. Hence, the wave model has a white bias and suffers from heterosexism and biologism. Contemporary queer and quantum feminists reconfigure the concept of the feminist wave by asking how the ontology of a feminist wave looks.