The Women's Movement Persistence Through Feminism Essay

This weeks readings explored the historical changes of throughout the feminist movement. By looking at the history of the movement the current state of feminism become clearer. As we have studied the theme of intersectionality was not an element of previous feminist movements. This means that the first and second 'waves ' of feminism were not movements where all women, regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, sex, or class, felt included and supported (González). bell hooks writes in her book Feminism is for Everyone that feminism is an ideology and movement that everyone can understand (Introduction). She continues on to explain that feminism is weakened when women are constantly in competition with one another. She cites how

The piece "The Women 's Movement Persistence through Transformation" highlights how the changes within the movement and the reactions of society to feminism in general illustrate that we are advancing. The movement that has sustained various attacks continues to adapt and resurface, what some people refer to as 'new waves '. However, according to Linda Nicholson the wave metaphor is actually detrimental to the movement at large. I agree with her narrative that the wave symbolism is no longer useful. She says, " In sum, the wave metaphor suggests the idea that gender activism in the history of the United States has been for the most part unified around one set of ideas, and that set of ideas can be called feminism" (Nicholson). This is not true and reiterates a history where the issues and voices of so many women were excluded. If the gender movement was more accepting from the beginning the idea that feminism is the only true gender discourse would have never gain as much support, in my

I found the discussion of power in Paula Gunn Allen 's piece "Where I Come From Is Like This" to be particularly interesting. Her internal dynamic between the White society and the American Indian society allows her to speak to power in a unique way. She writes about never seeing any of the women in her life as weak but still holding negative imagines of American Indian 's at large in her head (31). She also speaks to the internal struggle that I believe most women, or at least myself, have experienced, when we discount our own strength due to society telling us that we are weak. Contradicting my strength because I am told constantly that I am weak, or at least weaker than my male peers, is something that I have to unlearn, just as she struggles to unlearn the ideas the White society gave her about her American Indian