Post-Modern and Third-Wave Feminism

Post-Modern Feminism is known as "feminism for intellects." It focuses on the dichotomy of language and how it enforces gender stereotypes. In language, men are usually associated with positive terms like activity, sun, culture, day, speaking, and high while women are associated with negative terms like passivity, moon, nature, night, writing, and low. Post-modern feminism tries to break the trio of the phallus/penis/pen by playing with language in writing. It is criticized for being "all talk, no walk," because it is too much about writing and not enough about political movement.

Third-Wave feminism is considered to be "lived messiness." It focuses on the contradictions and differences lived by women in society. Whereas second-wave feminism focused mainly on the needs of white women, third-wave feminism tries to understand the individual needs of women of all races and social classes. Third-wave feminism's main goal is female empowerment. It contradicts second-wave feminism, because it focuses on power-feminism instead of victim-feminism. The criticisms of third-wave feminism are the lack of a defined goal, which results from trying to accommodate so many types of women.

Third-Wave feminism appeals more to me than Post-Modern feminism, because it takes an international perspective. After living in Ecuador and seeing the injustices to women in other countries, I like that there is a type of feminism that tries to consider the concerns of everyone. I do understand how it can be unproductive, because women in Ecuador face very different issues than women in America. I wish there was a way to take the ideas of Third-Wave feminism and make them more productive.