Women\'s Studies Feminist Third Wave Publications: Reflection

Women's Studies

Feminist Third Wave publications: Reflection

One of the most striking aspects of Bitch Magazine is the plethora of topics it addresses. 'Women's issues' are clearly no longer confined to concerns narrowly pertaining to sexuality and gender. Somewhat 'expected' topics such as lesbianism on Glee are also paired with thoughtful articles on women and film and a positive article about how romance is presented in the culture on Valentine's Day. Rather than simply condemning the popular media, Bitch is interested in how it can be appropriated and used to express feminist ends. Or, conversely, how apparently feminist aspects of popular culture many not be as clearly manifest as one might suspect.

Diversity is clearly the watchword of modern feminism. There is no longer a feminist orthodoxy of behavior and belief. Rather than focusing on politics alone, questions of how identity is manifested are of equal concern. There is a series in Bitch about women with Asperger's Syndrome, for example, and its showcases various works by women that are not necessarily explicitly ideological, but simply offer a non-mainstream view.

Sexing the Political is far less quirky, and the first article one encounters upon viewing the website is a searching tale of a former pro-life teen activist who decided to have an abortion. Abortion is a more 'conventional' subject for feminist writing. However, Sexing the Political manifests a Third World feminist 'spin' by its gut-wrenching discussion of the polarization of today's culture wars, torn between the explicitly religious and non-religious. Furthermore, it contains a twist -- the author was originally going to give up her baby for adoption, but the Christian adoption agency the teen contacted refused to place the child because it was bi-racial, motivating the author's decision to have an abortion and turn against the pro-life movement.

Sexing the Political has fewer visually-based advertisements, longer and more thoughtful text, and focuses more upon traditional legal and political concerns like abortion and same-sex marriage, but it still encompasses a multiplicity of views, and the essays transcend conventional classification. It is explicitly personal in its orientation, reflecting the common trope of the feminist movement that the personal is political, but it also acknowledges the emotional power of the other side, rather than simply presents the familiar issue from a hackneyed perspective. Identity politics and finding one's self are clearly still important to feminism, although stories of abortion can now be conveyed with more subtle moral nuance.

Bust is even more irreverent and less explicitly political than Bitch. One of its stories has nothing to do with feminism per se, but instead focuses upon the drag queen RuPaul's recently-staged 'drag race' and a rose petal jam doughnut recipe. The magazine's website is brightly colored in strong pinks, and while it does contain some substantive articles, like an excoriation of a Fox News anchor who implied that women should 'expect' to get raped when serving in the military, overall its attitude is more fun and feisty, rather than intellectual. (Its online store is called a 'Boobtique').