Post-feminism
Like feminism,
Post-feminism (or postfeminism) is not a uniform object either in practice or discourse. The term first entered into American usage in the early 1980s, initially signifying backlash over
second-wave feminism. The term now denotes a wide range of theories, all of which argue that feminism is no longer relevant to today's society.
[Modleski, Tania. Feminism without Women: Culture and Criticism in a "Postfeminist" Age. New York: Routledge, 1991, 3. ]One of the earliest uses of the term was in
Susan Bolotin's 1982 article "Voices of the Post-Feminist Generation," published in
New York Times Magazine. This article was based on a number of interviews with women who largely agreed with the goals of feminism, but did not identify as feminists.
[Rosen, Ruth. The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America. New York: Viking, 2000, 275, 337. ]The post-feminist texts which emerged in the 1980s and '90s portrayed
second-wave feminism as a monolithic entity, thereby allowing the author to criticize these generalizations.
[ Jones, Amelia. "Postfeminism, Feminist Pleasures, and Embodied Theories of Art," New Feminist Criticism: Art, Identity, Action, Eds. Joana Frueh, Cassandra L. Langer and Arlene Raven. New York: HarperCollins, 1994. 16-41, 20. ] Some claimed that feminism forced women to view themselves as victims, while others posited that women had grown disenchanted with feminism and now wished to return to domesticity.
* Rene Denfeld,
The New Victorians: A Young Woman's Challenge to the Old Feminist Order, (New York: Warner Books, 1995)
* Camille Paglia,
Sex Art and American Culture: Essays, (Vintage, 1992)
* Katie Roiphe,
The Morning After: Fear, Sex and Feminism on Campus (1993)
*
Girl Power*
Third-wave feminism
