When 41-year-old Lauren Rosewarne was a PhD student in 2003, her supervisor was a radical feminist who disapproved of her heterosexuality and her decision to wear makeup.
Nearly twenty years later, Rosewarne, still a committed feminist, is an Associate Professor of politics at Melbourne University.
Illustration: Reg LynchCredit:
The undergraduates she teaches are sex-positive, gender-inclusive feminists who are more likely to have their consciousnesses raised by TikTok or Tumblr than by a Naomi Wolf book.
She has witnessed the evolution of feminism through the girl power 1990s and the Beyoncé “independent woman” moment of the noughties, up to #metoo, trans-inclusivity, and debates over whether cosmetic surgery and vocal fry (the way some young women inflect upwards the end of their sentences) represent bimbo culture, or simply the triumph of female choice.
“When I was an undergraduate in the late ’90s, the academy was obsessed with the ideas of post-modernism and post-feminism,” says Rosewarne.
“Ally McBeal was on television, there was an idea that the aims of feminism had been achieved and women could get behind this man-obsessed, baby-obsessed protagonist who was super-model thin.”
Rosewarne believes feminism evolved significantly when the internet became user content-driven in the early 2000s, starting with blogs and culminating in now-ubiquitous social media.
In Ally McBeal there was an idea that the aims of feminism had been achieved and women could get behind this man-obsessed, baby-obsessed protagonist who was super-model thin.
All of a sudden, women had a platform where they could collaborate, share experiences and broadcast information. A new feminism was born.
“A couple of years later you have trans and gender identity issues put in the lap of feminism,” she says.
“They are, for me, the biggest departures from what had gone before.”
While Second Wave feminists of the ’60s and ’70s were stereotyped as bra-burning man-haters, younger generations, loosely grouped as Third Wave feminists, have reacted against the rigidity of their elders when it comes to rejecting gender roles, care for personal appearance, and the inter-personal politics of sex.
Recent splits between Millennial and Gen Z feminists have led some to ask whether we have arrived at a Fourth Wave of feminism, powered by social media, changing ideas about gender, and a form of identity politics that doesn’t automatically centre female oppression.
Tilly Lawless, a 29-year-old author and sex worker, believes the Fourth Wave has arrived.
“The third wave was about empowerment at the individual level, it was obsessed with representation: ‘We need Hillary Clinton in the White House because she’s a woman’,” Lawless believes.
“Fourth wave feminism is a little more critical of supporting people just because of their gender.
“It’s looking at things more systemically rather than just looking at individuals.”
Young women such as Tame and Brittany Higgins, who is 26, have recently shot to prominence as the nation’s most visible young feminists.
Grace Tame and Brittany Higgins at the National Press Club in Canberra last week.Credit: James Brickwood
Both have largely delighted older feminists with their frank and unapologetic confrontation of structural power.
But other older people (including the Prime Minister’s wife Jenny Morrison) were dismayed by what they perceived as Tame’s lack of politeness when she met the Prime Minister at an Australian of the Year function last month, generating news photographs that went viral.
“Women have been angry for a really long time,” says Rosewarne.
“The difference is the visibility of that anger.”
Unlike previous generations, today’s young feminists don’t need the mainstream media to notice them or amplify their cause.
Grace Tame with Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Jenny Morrison.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
They can launch critiques of powerful figures (notably the Prime Minister Scott Morrison) from wherever they happen to be with their smartphone.
“These young women are digital natives who have come of age with the internet, and they can control their narrative,” says Rosewarne.
Young women can raise their voices via social media, but they can also be educated through it.
“There are young people who have learned their feminism from [social media website] Tumblr,” says Rosewarne.
“These young women are digital natives who have come of age with the internet, and they can control their narrative,” says Rosewarne.Credit: Justin McManus
But the central role of social media in contemporary feminism attracts its own critique.
Should the complexities of the women’s movement be condensed into a bite-sized TikTok video? Can they be?
Lawless, who has 50,000 Instagram followers, says that “unfortunately, we are having complex, nuanced things reduced to soundbites”.
“Things that have multiple books written about them are reduced to an infographic stuck up on someone’s [Instagram] story,” she says.
If social media serves as a gateway to knowledge, that’s fine.
“I would love if the feminism-lite or Feminism 101 people access via TikToks, led people to further engage and think about feminism,” Lawless says.
But as she is the first to admit, TikTok and Instagram are also visual mediums that reward aesthetically pleasing content, not to mention female nudity.
“If I want something important to be read, I have to post a semi-nude photo,” she says.
“Social media does force you to think about aesthetic. And some things that are important don’t have an aesthetic.”
Social media has also led to the rise of “influencer feminism” and others who make money on the internet under the banner of feminism, but with a loose connection to it.
“So you will have Kim Kardashian posting a photo of herself naked on International Women’s Day with the hashtag #empowerment,” explains Rosewarne.
“You see this picked up by advertising, this idea that any individual decision is empowering, that you’re doing this for you, and not for the male gaze.”
But to Rosewarne, that’s not feminism.
“How does that advance female equality?
“It’s not issues-based feminism, it’s a justification for personal choice.”
Probably the most controversial point of difference between older and younger generations of feminists is over trans people.
Younger feminists are more likely to believe that “trans women are women” and welcome trans people to the movement.
This is confronting to some older feminists who believe biological sex, and the experience of living in a biologically female body, is central to the cause.
Prominent older feminists including Germaine Greer and JK Rowling have challenged the idea that “trans women are women”, earning themselves the charge of being TERFs (trans exclusionary radical feminists).
TERF is an insult freely thrown by Millennial and Gen Z feminists, although TERFs prefer to call themselves “gender critical feminists”.
“Second wave feminism is obviously full of TERFS and SWERFs,” says Lawless (a SWERF is a sex-worker exclusionary radical feminist).
“They think that sex workers and trans women and trans men are traitors working undercover for the patriarchy.”
Young feminists are also more likely to emphasise “intersectionality” - the idea that women’s overlapping identities, such as their race, class, and sexual orientation, will impact the way they experience oppression.
Yasmin Poole, 23, is one such feminist.
She is a youth advocate and a national ambassador for girls charity Plan International Australia, and she defines her intersectional feminism as “including diverse women and non-binary people”.
Yasmin Poole is a youth advocate and a national ambassador for Plan International Australia.Credit: Martin Ollman
“If we want to create a free world, we also have to have conversations about race and class,” she says.
“Young women view it as structural. There is less about the individual onus and ‘girlboss feminism’, more about questioning why certain structures have historically kept us out.”
“Girlboss feminism” is a reference to the Millennial feminist trend which updated the “sisters doing it for themselves” ethos of the 1980s.
Girlboss feminism emphasised individual choice, “leaning in” in the corporate sphere, and put forward the idea that all women’s choices were inherently feminist because a woman made them.
“We are sceptical of that,” says Poole.
“It isn’t just about women having a position of power, it’s about what you do with it. You have to do more than that to create an equal world.”
The arguments and occasional tensions within the feminist movement are the best testament to its ongoing relevance, and its vitality.
Rosewarne says that “there has always been gatekeeping in feminism”, and refers back to her PhD supervisor.
“It’s kind of like the culture wars within the culture wars.”
Twitter: @JacquelineMaley
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