Not helping

If you know anything about feminism, you probably know about how feminist history can be roughly divided into three different waves of activity. In that scheme the first wave of feminism took place in the late 19th and early 20th century and focused on winning women equality before the law (right to vote, stand for election, get an education and so on), the second wave of feminism hit in the sixties and seventies, focusing on winning economical and societal equality (equal work for equal pay, getting out of restrictive gender roles, women winning control over their own reproductive systems and all that jazz) and the third wave started sometime in the nineties or perhaps earlier, focusing more on cultural issues and the interaction between sexism and racism, gender and sexuality and so on. Each wave built on the accomplishments of the preceding ones, while carrying the struggle into areas left untouched by them. It’s a massively simplified view of feminist history of course, based mainly on American experiences not always applicable to other countries and it leaves out everything that happened before the first wave or inbetween waves, but that’s only the start of the problem.

The real problem is that much of the difference between the various waves is political. Now nobody but historians really cares about first wave feminism anymore and all the people involved with it are long dead, but things are different for second and third wave feminists, both generations still very much alive and not always understanding each other. As with most movements, the differences between the two can often be decidedly minor to outsides, more a question of difference in degree rather than kind, but for those in the middle of the struggle they can look enormous. Especially on the internet, where everybody has a voice and is an expert — second versus third wave feminism leads to almost as many flamewars as gun control does. These sort of debates can be hugely counterproductive, especially when taking place in the context of bigger battles.

Case in point, when Cheryl Morgan gives the following definition of second wave feminism in an otherwise sensible post teasing out the impact of different notions of feminism on modern UK science fiction and why it’s so seemingly unfriendly to women, it doesn’t help:

Second wave feminism was the movement that started in the 60s and 70s. In theory it was about equal rights for women in all areas of life. In practice it was sometimes more about equal rights for middle class white women, and occasionally about the rights of middle class white lesbian separatists.

That’s cherrypicking and caricaturing the very worst aspects of second wave feminism, as seen through the lens of several decades worth of backlash. If your view of a second wave feminist is a bra-burning lesbian until graduation willing to pull the ladder up behind her as soon as she and her friends have broken the glass ceiling, that’s the backlash talking. Yes, there have been class and race issues with classical feminism that modern feminism is attempting to avoid and correct, but we should not forget that much of what third wave feminism concerns itself about was an issue for second wave feminists as well. That it sometimes degenerated into “equal rights for middle class white women” is not a feature of second wave feminism as such, but more of its defeat; the co-opting of parts of it by the patriarchy or the capitalist system or whatever you want to call it.

In the context of what so far has been a relatively fruitful debate about how to fix science fiction, especially British science fiction to make it less excluding towards women, such a sneer is unnecessary and unhelpful.