This paper uses an intersectional analysis to look at contemporary forms of women's popular protest in the hopes of raising questions about the explicit use of the gendered body in struggles for women's emancipation. Specifically, it explores the protests of SlutWalk and FEMEN to suggest that such body protests exemplify a problematic interface between third-wave and postfeminism. This interface or junction is most noticeable and problematic in relation to uncontested auto-sexualisation or ‘femmenism’. I argue that any subversive potential these recent (...) mobilisations might offer is limited through their reproduction of patriarchal, hegemonic norms. This piece is theoretical in the main, though it does include some preliminary qualitative research by way of drawing on websites, news reports, Twitter feeds, Facebook pages, and other online content produced by or about SlutWalk and FEMEN. The hope is to raise questions about the value of this increasingly pervasive use of sexualised, gender protest for feminist organising, not merely as an academic exercise but for its utility in practice. (shrink)

Joan Scott’s ‘fantasy echo’ is deployed to analyse the trope of the mother/daughter relationship in contemporary laments about feminism’s failures, exemplified by Susan Faludi’s ‘American Electra: Feminism’s Ritual Matricide’ (2010). I demonstrate that Faludi’s primary argument – that young feminists do not respect the generations that precede them and therefore halt feminist progress – unreflectively relies upon a feminist maternal fantasy and ignores the prominent role spectacle culture plays in the circumscription of contemporary feminism. Building upon Scott’s attention to literature (...) to interrupt fantasy echoes and their inert visions of how feminism should appear, the article interprets The Portrait of a Lady (1908) through the tools of Scott’s historiography. I argue that Henry James’s novel, focused on an American ‘New Woman’, is an early account of how young women are sold fantasies of feminist freedom through spectacle culture and troubles the assumption that older women only forge benevolent relationships with younger women out of generosity. (shrink)

The following discussion explores dimensions of feminism’s ongoing efforts to negotiate split normative claims. It attempts to push through a stalled debate within contemporary feminism by describing it as a mis-recognition of feminism’s double-sided normativity. It suggests that an ‘either/or’ construction of what feminism is about obscures the contribution that each can make to a clarification of the limitations and concealed entailments of the other. This investigation into the normative tensions within contemporary feminism will be illuminated in the second part (...) of the article with reference to Maria Markus’s reflections in her major essay ‘Decent Society and/or Civil Society?’ on the intertwined normativities that form the ‘utopian horizon’ of modern democracies. (shrink)

Since the start of the new millennium in the UK, a range of new feminist activities – national networks, issue-specific campaigns, local groups, festivals, magazines and blogs – have been formed by a new constituency of mostly younger women and men. These new feminist activities, which we term ‘third-wave’ feminism, have emerged in a ‘post-feminist’ context, in which feminism is considered dead or unnecessary, and where younger feminists, if represented at all, are often dismissed as insufficiently political. Representations of North (...) American third-wave feminism are brought into play in these criticisms of the UK third wave, and insufficient attention has been paid to the distinctiveness of the UK contexts. Drawing on data from a survey of 1265 people involved in post-2000 forms of feminism and semi-structured interviews with thirty feminist activists, the article sketches out the contours of the contemporary feminist movement and its activists, activism and priorities. It attends to differences and similarities between second and third waves, and situates contemporary UK feminism in its distinctive UK context. Arguing that feminism is both alive and relevant for significant numbers of people in the UK today, the article interrogates younger feminists’ reluctance to use the term ‘third-wave feminism’ to describe themselves, attributing this reluctance to ambivalent and cynical representations of the third wave in academic literature and the popular media. (shrink)

How religious or spiritual are feminists today? Filling a gap in the literature on feminism and religion, this article outlines findings from the first survey-based study of feminists’ spiritual attitudes in recent years. Drawing on survey data, this article explores the religious and spiritual views of 1,265 third-wave feminists, most of whom are women in their twenties and thirties. Comparison with surveys of religious adherence in the UK reveals that these feminists are significantly less religious and somewhat more spiritual than (...) the general population. The article goes on to ask why this might be, and suggests three explanations: feminism's alignment with secularism, secularization and feminism's role within it, and feminism's association with alternative spiritualities. (shrink)