Modern Feminism
Our last class revolved around the themes of Feminism and Capitalism and their respective waves throughout history. As a class, we are just starting to debate hard topics, which in turn makes me wish we had indefinite time to debate and learn from different arguments.
We started by classifying the 3 (maybe 4?) waves of Feminism. the 1st wave is the beginning of the movement, originating in Europe due to women’s lack of suffrage and the mentality that women are child bearers and nothing more. This mentality has always rubbed me the wrong way, especially since many men, and sometimes women, still think this way in places like Honduras. Macho culture tends to influence this mentality, and can sometimes lead domestic violence and abuse.
After fighting for our rights to suffrage, women went through a 2nd wave of feminism, which focused on equality in the workplace — both in wages and respect. Women argued that social labor is still labor, and hence should be compensated and respected. Hidden forms of work, such as care work, house work, etc., not only are mostly performed by women, but they are referred to as hidden or social reproduction because society don’t value the time and effort put into the work, hence deeming it as a given. These are hard jobs too, often thought of as undesirable. In modern day, most of these jobs are performed by immigrants, which is why I raise an eyebrow when the far right claims that immigrants are “lazy” or are “out here to take Americans’ jobs”.
The 3rd wave surges from radical American feminists urging to restructure society. Their core argument stems from wanting to change opressive structures in society, the oversexualization of women, and liberating femininity. Although I don’t 100% align with their values, I do believe that women should be free to wear, say, and do whatever they want as long it is not hurting anyone else. In class, we used the example of pornography and its role in feminism, with different sides of the classroom taking a pro or against stance. Even though the topic of pornography is a challenging one, I found the pro side particularly aligned with my views, especially since they argued for the protection of women in the sex industry and the liberty of women to control their own bodies and seek monetary funds freely and safely.
Further into this topic is abortion, which has been highly debated in the U.S. for many years but is now of more relevance due to the possibility of Roe v Wade being overturned. I believe that now more than ever women’s rights are being challenged, and somehow the once progressive United States is slowly retracing its steps. It seems capitalism has played a huge part in this regression, and we can refer to Marx’s criticisms of capitalism to see that a centralized group of people, the Elite, are trying to control the means of production AKA the rest of society. It is sad as a woman to see the country I immigrated to slowly regress, but now more than ever I am determined to fight for my rights and push Feminism forward.
