We have come a long way.
The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America of 1776 begins, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” This is what we get when the loudest voices in the room are all men. In response, First Wave feminism emerged in the 1800s as a long battle for granting women the right to vote, a right that indeed seems self-evident in hindsight from the vantage point of 2023 but men were blind to that for far too long. Finally, at long last, women won the fight in 1919 with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution.
Second Wave Feminism emerged as the women's liberation movement of the 1960s when I was a teenager. Women desired more than equal rights legally as persons. Women challenged the culture that treated them as subordinate to men, controlled by economic dependency as captured by the slogan that women should be kept "barefoot and pregnant." "The pill" became available in 1960 and began the sexual liberation of women. In the following decades much progress was made in achieving social equality for women.
Third Wave Feminism, said to have begun around 1990, was heavily influenced by postmodernism, in my opinion. This eventually led to the current Woke Anti-Woke culture war, again imo. There currently seems to be an abundance of foolish females and foolish males, many unfortunately in the US Congress. The recent appearance at a congressional hearing of the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT, all women, has exposed the sorry current state and the urgent need to do much better. My personal intention is to understand the dynamics of current battles but to not be captured by them.
Fourth Wave Feminism, if there is such a thing, is perhaps a reaction to postmodernism while also appropriately asserting appropriate feminine power. Exhibit number one is the MeToo Movement which began in 2017. I read Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement by Tarana Burke and my book report is available here.
Where do we go next?
First we need to pause and comment further on the above paragraphs. My four paragraphs are an extremely brief outline of a very long and complex history. Many narratives have been written, too many for any one person to absorb. Feminism is a hyperobject, something so big that it is beyond the capacity of a single person to fully grasp and all experts on feminism tell incomplete stories. So before outlining a path forward, how we proceed is important. This task is best done, imo, as a collective effort of a group seeking collective wisdom. Better yet, where next needs to emerge from numerous groups finding numerous paths forward that, hopefully, eventually unite in cohesive plurality.
I think I have found one such group. This essay is my attempt to clarify my own thoughts so that I can share them with this group. And I am also hoping that this essay will help serve as a bridge to other groups interested in next wave feminism.
I was tempted to label next wave feminism as metamodern feminism. However, I think I prefer the term Final Wave Feminism but meaning this in a metamodern sense, knowing that the final wave will be a recursive process without end. There will always be room for new knowledge, new stories, new experiments.
Let’s begin co-creating Final Wave Feminism with women leading the way and with men in support, identifying metamodern values and processes, as a collective effort seeking wisdom and making it more common.
This essay feels like a very crude attempt at defining a starting point and a direction, at least for myself. But with retrospective coherence, perhaps itself part of a metamodern process, it does seem like some of my earlier writings are significant. My first essay in this direction was written three years ago.
About Women, posted December 11, 2020
About Testosterone, posted May 10, 2023
About Barbie,posted August 20, 2023
I was writing about masculinity back in 2010 and it is interesting to read my own articles again, My Masculinity and Men's Mental Health Matters. Today I believe more strongly than ever that the bodies we come in are very significant. The female body and the male body are very different and, yes, nonbinary is more than a matter of self-identification. Next wave feminism should, imo, be built on both objective reality and subjective experience.
I am personally not interested in integrating feminine and masculine energies, orientations or temperaments, although I think there is considerable useful work in that direction. I am far more interested in celebrating what is somewhat distinctly female, for example, giving birth to offspring. I am not attracted to a model of human beings with parts that with effort can become a complete whole. I am more attracted to a model of human beings as a complex system from which the current self emerges. It seems to me that the development of complexity science is one of the foundations of metamodernism and is somehow relevant to Final Wave Feminism. However, both approaches are merely frameworks, constructs, maps not territories. I would like to help develop a new framework with awareness that we need many frameworks, many perspectives, hold them lightly and not be overly attached to any.
I would be interested in hearing about any groups combining feminism and Collective Presencing or similar practices. I highly respect Ria Baeck and her work and I think she embodies what we are aiming for. Some WeSpaces seem to have a healthy feminine vibe. How we do things seems to reflect feminine energy while What we do seems more masculine. Of course, we need both but perhaps we need to shift our primary focus.
I am also interested in the Divine Feminine in the spirit of THE MAN LOVES THE WINE SHE SERVES THROUGH HER BODY An Erotic Encounter with the Divine Feminine by David Bryen.
I am interested in connecting and collaborating with others interested in next wave feminism as something radically new. But be warned, I think I am good at spotting false moves, pretending to connect and collaborate when the hidden motive is to sell me something or capture my attention. And I have already made a commitment to a small group that I think will serve me well for the foreseeable future.