Last week we looked at the ‘first wave’ of feminism, usually associated with women in western countries agitating for the right to vote. Today we’re looking at the ‘second wave’ of feminism, which is the period that probably most of us think about when we think about ‘feminism.’
The second wave feminists of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s were far from monolithic in their thoughts and beliefs, but underlying all of the diverse feminisms of this time was the belief that the social system of patriarchy was limiting women's full participation in society and women’s full expressions of their self identity. During the second wave, women’s identities became central to the argument for rights - both equal treatment to men and different rights based on women’s different biology and desires. Although racism and homophobia continued to limit marginalised women’s experience of the feminist movement, identity based feminist movements developed to look at the specific needs of Black women, lesbian women, and immigrant women. Women made huge gains during this period. It’s hard to summarise them all: access to divorce, birth control and abortion; participation in higher education and fields of work that had been open to men only; legal rights to equal pay and treatment at work (although we know we’re a long way off that actually happening!); the first women were elected as representatives; plus a general cultural awareness of sexism and women banding together to talk about patriarchal oppression. This was the era of consciousness-raising groups, where women would get together to talk through their experiences of sexism and understand the interconnected ways patriarchy affected their lives.
It was during this period that ‘gynocentric’ feminism emerged, which focused on women’s differences to men as a point of strength. This idea, which we might now label as ‘essentialist’ because of its understanding of women’s natures as inborn and immutable, allowed women to call for different, separate rights to men.
Gynocentric feminism embraced spellings of woman (wimmin, womyn, wemoon) to highlight the linguistic power of sexism - that one couldn’t even write the word ‘woman’ without ‘man’. While this may sound extreme, attention to linguistic sexism has filtered down so that many of us now pay attention to women’s erasure in language. This camp of feminism often looked to myth and nature and drew associations between women’s intuition, bodies, and the natural world.
Another branch of second wave feminism was a radical approach which viewed society as structurally enmeshed with patriarchal oppression, in such a way that society would need to be completely dismantled and rebuilt for women’s liberation to occur. An extension of this thought led some women to create separatist communities where they could develop skills and models to eradicate women’s oppression. (This is a great history of American lesbian feminist movements after you get past the bit about the building works). Some feminists during this period advocated for all women to adopt ‘political lesbianism’ as a total rejection of male power; others rejected the inclusion of lesbians within mainstream feminist politics as a ‘lavender menace’ which would dilute and divert the mission of feminism to bring about equality for women - much as white first wave feminists rejected collaboration with Black women struggling for emancipation.
‘Womanism’ is a feminist movement created by and for Black women. Womanists like Barbara Smith, Audre Lorde, and Alice Walker worked to build community amongst Black feminists and work for cultural change that addressed both sexism and racism. This overview of Womanism by Beyond the Moment is a great short introduction to the ideas and leaders of Womanism during this period.
As the second wave inched towards the 1980s, the conversation amongst feminists shifted. We’ll talk more about the cultural moment of the 1980s next week, where feminist politics responded to conservative politics, nuclear threats, the spectre of AIDS, and the nascent violence against women movement developed.
There are so many great histories of the activists and movements from this period, and lots of incredible first person narratives and essays available online. I really encourage you to dive in and follow your curiosity as you read about the diverse range of second wave feminism. I appreciate that I am glossing over lots and lots of incredible work - we could spend a year (or much longer!) just learning about second wave feminisms. Apologies if I’ve skipped over some of the things that are most important to you.
Carol Hanisch, The Personal is Political
Lecture notes outlining the difference between Humanist and Gynocentric Feminism (this is based on an article by Iris Young which I have not been able to link to for free)
A lengthy oral history archive of British feminist experiences
Archive copy of “No More Fun and Games”, the magazine of radical lesbian group Cell 16