We Don't Need Another Wave: Dispatches from the Next Generation of Feminists

by Melody Berger (Editor)

We Don’t Need Another Wave is a critique of the ways in which feminism is discussed in the mainstream media. Today’s young feminists are wary of being labeled. They are media-savvy, hyper-aware of being categorized and marginalized, and are here to tell the world that feminists are feminists — diverse in age and experience — and that it’s time to drop the labels in favor of proactive agendas and united goals.

Topics that matter to young feminists range from lighter issues, such as DIY culture and craftivism, to heavy-hitting issues that feminists have struggled with for generations, including abuse, rape, shame, and self-hatred. The young writers in this collection band together under the banner of feminism to share the message that the F-word is a good thing, and that feminists are breaking new ground while still valuing the traditions and achievements of their sisters and foremothers.

We Don’t Need Another Wave brings a message of unity and a message to get beyond subcategorizing a movement that needs cohesiveness and strives on strength in numbers.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Womens Studies, Essays, Gender Studies, Politics, Anthologies

300 pages, Paperback

First published September 25, 2006

Reviews

[Tinea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hit or miss anthology about feminist activism, mostly by youth, in the early 2000s. Much of it was miss, but a few really good pieces did stand out. A remarkable amount of essays began very strongly, pushing boundaries and questioning accepted feminist thought, only to end in inconclusive whimpers. We Don't Need Another Wave, evidently, because we lack theoretical and historical coherence within individual essays, let alone a movement.

Uncertainty ran throughout. Many authors participated in huge street protests in this era, including anti-war and immigrant rights marches and the March for Women's Lives. They grappled with what they saw as the importance of these actions in their lives and for the causes they care about, but the overall ineffectiveness and irrelevance of these protests in actually effecting change. Several other essays expressed ambivalence towards academia and women studies classes as young women found them both inspiring and frustrating, liberating and alienating. Many authors wrote about sex: queering it, selling it, being really uncomfortable with it. A lot of politics, a lot of brooding, but not a lot of real reflection.

The essays that most struck me were the introspective analyses of personal experience. Yeah feminist epistemology! Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha redefined "survival as resistance" as a queer Sri Lankan immigrant woman and activist living in North America after 9/11 in her essay (whose title alone is brilliant), "A Time to Hole Up and a Time to Kick Ass: Reimagining Activism as a Million Different Ways to Fight." Yes. I also liked kat marie yoas on how academic feminism doesn't speak to or for poor people; Mary Christmas on punkrock, spanging, and organizing sex workers; Lanelle Moise on race, love, and trying to spare a loved one the rage brought on by constant racist assaults of life; and Maria Cristina Rangel on navigating her life as a queer working class Latina through the stories of her queer Latino uncle, who was murdered in Seattle when she was just coming out.

A few essays were downright bad. In "The Early Trials of the Novice Postfeminist Pornographer," Kristina Wong fails to grasp why her "humorous" male porn shoot proposal (Asian men with ridiculously long dicks) is called racist by the men she asks to model for it; at another point she assures us she "never ever, ever, ever wanted to be a porn star," obliviously shaming the work she's supposedly supporting. A surprise failure was Dean Spade's "For Lovers and Fighters," an engrossing exploration of overcoming power dynamics in polyamorous relationships, only to end with the admission that it was only an intellectual exercise, because Spade is just too jealous to actually engage in healthy poly relationships.

There were a lot of essays with this bait and switch ending, fascinating writing leading up to clunky, weak, or downright awful conclusions. The worst was Alexia Vernon's "Troubling the Performance of the Traditional Incest Narrative." It is hard to write critically about someone's expression of how they experienced growing up and processing incest and its longterm ramifications on their life. Vernon raises so many good questions about how we react to sexual abuse in children (Vernon says she was as traumatized or more by all the therapy and stigma as from the incest), how the limited victim/survivor roles available don't fit everyone's experiences, and how even children's sexuality is not always passive. But while I respect that Vernon claims her sexual agency, I really object to the extent she "reframes" her abuse narrative, including comparisons of her aggressive childhood masturbation on a stuffed animal with abuse directed at a live being. It's not "troubling the narrative" when you remove power from the equation.

[Ciara · Rating 3 out of 5]

i was fairly psyched to read this book, being that i am of the generation of feminists that the book dispatches, as it were. & i recognized several contributers' names as either writers i like or people i actually know. the author even once sent me her zine for distro consideration (but i didn't pick it up--it wasn't really covering any new ground). i guess the "not covering any new ground" criticism could also apply to this book. i mean, it would be an excellent gift to a new feminist, a great read for someone who has only gotten into feminism in the last years or two. the contributers come from a lot of different angles & cover a lot of different aspects of feminist thought, from movement-building to reproductive justice to anti-oppression work to becoming the media, & this is just a small sampler platter of the contents. but for me, i mean, i can't remember a time when i haven't identified as a feminist. & not just passively, like, "yeah, girls rule!" i have been reading feminist theory since i was like twelve. so this book mostly served to reinforce a lot of ideas i've already had, or in places where i disagreed with an author, it made me dislike the author (haha). i will say, the most annoying part of this book was josh russell's piece about the importance of including men in the feminist movement. SHUT THE FUCK UP, dude. i found it really disasteful that a dude would write something for a feminist book about how the feminist movement should make space for men. seriously! it boggles the mind. i'm not of the opinion that dudes can't be feminists, or that there is no place for guys in a feminist movement. i actually think it's really important for men to educate themselves about feminist issues & take pro-active steps to make feminist choices. this could involve, say, taking a bigger role in birth control--maybe even paying for half the cost of your female partner's birth control pills. just to name one tiny example. but instead, most of the most vocally "feminist" men i have met/worked with/interacted with/whatever have been super-invested in the importance of men having "a role" in the feminist movement. they haven't really taken steps to define what this role might be. they just want to be included. & the fact that they are so focused on centering themselves within a movement that actually isn't all about them being special snowflakes kind of makes me ill. & josh's piece was a lot of, "i didn't really understand feminism until i had this incredibly epiphany: women are oppressed!" DUH, dude. get the fuck over yourself. it was just a bunch of self-congratulatory privilege-flaunting & i don't think it should have been included, especially because it was a transparent attempt at resume-bulding more than anything else ("publishing credits include..."). that is why i knocked the rating down to three stars. the end.

[Lissette · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely love the essays in this book! This was assigned as one of the three books in my Intro to WS class and I thought this was a very informative read. This touches on just about every topic you can think of when it comes to feminism, racism, classism, and just about any other -ism you can think of.

[Terri · Rating 1 out of 5]

My first major disappointment from Seal Press. I think the editor picked the authors more for identity politics reasons than quality of writing for this anthology. Too many of these essays felt like a report for a women's studies class (ex: "I went to the March for Women's Lives and this is what happened..."). Yikes. Not to mention too many of the essays really blurred together in terms of the authors' experiences. For a book that so blatantly tries to demonstrate diversity, it sure lacked in the subject matter.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS FROM A WIDE VARIETY OF YOUNG FEMINISTS

Lisa Jervis (of 'Bitch’ magazine fame) wrote in her Foreword to this 2006 book, “We’ve reached the end of the wave terminology’s usefulness. What was at first a handy-dandy way to refer to feminism’s history, present, and future potential with a single metaphor has become shorthand that invites intellectual laziness, an escape hatch from the hard work of distinguishing between core beliefs and a cultural moment.

“Using the simplest and more straightforward definition, I am, indisputably, a member of the Third Wave. I was born in 1972, right smack in the demographic that people think about when they think about the Third Wave. But discussions of the waves are only nominally about demographics. The metaphor wraps up differences in age, ideology, tactics, and style, and pretends that distinguishing among these factors is unimportant. Even the more nuanced discussions of Third Wavers tend to cast [us as] … sex-obsessed young thangs with a penchant for lip gloss and a disregard for recent history… (Pg. 13-14)

She continues, “We all want the same thing… we want gender justice. We may not all agree on exactly what it looks like or how to get it. We should never expect to agree… I want to see these internal disagreements continue. I want to see as much wrangling over them as ever. But I want them articulated accurately. And that means recognizing the generational divide for what it is---an illusion.” (Pg. 17-18)

Editor Melody Berger wrote in the Introduction, “People say to me all the time, ‘Oh, you must be so happy that there’s this renewed interest in feminism lately!’… No, not really at all…I wish this new state of mass enlightenment had happened BEFORE we lost so many of the impressive gains of the Second Wave feminist movement. And I’m certainly not happy with the paltry ways the mainstream media ‘cover’ feminism. The same old recycled stories get run over and over again. You know, stuff like ‘Why is feminism the f-word among today’s youth?’ and ‘What wave are they riding now?’ Don’t get me wrong… [when] I get interviewed for these f-word stories it helps me promote the feminist magazine I created for teens/youthful people, THE F-WORD.” (Pg. 19-20)

She continues, “People will ask me if I identify as a Third Waver, or if … I think my generation is part of … a post-Third Wave. A Fourth Wave, if you will My answer: ‘Good God, we don’t need another wave.’ … I think the whole concept of a Third Wave was great… as a rallying cry during the 1990s. But, really, its’ time to quit TALKING about the rallying cry and … RALLY to the rallying cry… this book… is NOT a dis of the Third Wave. It’s more a critique of the ways in which feminism gets discussed in the mainstream media… There is so much focus on the packaging of our ‘message’ that we hardly ever talk about what the actual ‘message’ is. As if there’s only one.” (Pg. 20-21)

She explains, “This book brings together an incredibly diverse group of talented young feminists: writers and activists, men and women and genderbenders alike. There’s a lot of emphasis on DIY, take-it-to-the-streets kinds of projects… Feminism’s long-standing battles---from sexual abuse and recovery to body-image battles---play a central role… We, the supposedly ‘apathetic’ youth of the United States, are doing our part to enact our feminisms as well, whether through cultural representations or political organizing… Nor are we marginalizing ourselves from older activists by thinking up a feisty new ‘wave’ that will ultimately create more divisions than it is worth… I’m tired of only discussing theory. I’m tired of strategizing effective ways to combat ‘negative images of feminists.’ People are TAKING AWAY OUR RIGHTS! Should we politely ask them to stop? We don’t need another wave. We need a movement.” (Pg. 21-22)

Jessica Hoffman says in her essay about her work helping organize Ladyfest L.A. (which raised $10,000 for the East L.A.’s Women’s Center), “[I] wonder how a group of feminists could enact the worst girl-socialized group dynamics, could form cliques and … make misformed judgments and turn so many cold shoulders? It’s hard to live theoretical ideas and shed a lifetime of individualist/conformist socialization when you’re walking alone into a room full of strangers. And it’s ludicrous to expect that people socialized in a hierarchical society that defines community in assimilationist terms would naturally, effortlessly work together across differences and without hierarchies. When I think about it that way, I’m no longer dismayed by how we went wrong but amazed at what we accomplished.” (Pg. 89)

Dani S. Dela George recounts, “I spoke out about ‘Take Back the Night’ at Rutgers for quite a few reasons… [One] involved my own experiences with violence. I am queer. Most days, I define myself as a woman. Moreover, I was once involved in an abusive relationship with another woman. I was punched, kicked, pushed, scorned, degraded, spit upon. Rutgers’ ‘Take Back the Night’ committee, therefore, was making the assumption that I---and others like me---feel safe in a crowd of three hundred women. What lay at the center of this assumption was the idea that violence is created by men and experienced by women. Violence isn’t that linear. Rutgers’ ‘Take Back the Night’ committee was not acknowledging that violence is felt by women from other women, men by other men, men by women, and by people who don’t fit neatly into those categories. I felt silenced. I felt as if my experiences weren’t valid enough for this Rutgers’ ‘Take Back the Night.’ I was not going to stand silenced; I was going to march with ‘Take Back the Night,’ but in a very different way.” (Pg. 146)

Melody Berger wrote in an essay, “I write to communicate with all those like-minded folks out there who are horrified by what’s going on in our world; I write so others will write, too. We live under a social system that encourages us to be isolated from each other: to wake up in our little domicile bubbles, shuffle off to our car bubbles, focus on menial, wage-slave tasks all day… and return home to several hours of brainwashing media blitz at night. Connecting with others all over the world via the Internet is a positive act of resistance. We are politicizing the personal and personalizing the political. Getting past the baby bumps, American Idols, and reality TV obsessions. In an age where the mainstream news has become nothing more than a slick product to package and sell, it is urgent that ‘we the people’ report our experiences from ground zero.. somewhere far beneath the falsified airwaves, where free speech may reign once again.” (Pg. 161)

This collection will be of keen interest to those studying ‘young’ feminists.

[Miri · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's pretty much what I've come to expect from these feminist anthologies. Some really good pieces, some not so much. Some pieces that contribute a unique perspective, some that don't. Some pieces that are very well-written, some that read like a high school assignment (not that there aren't many fantastic teenage writers). Some that explore intersections of race, class, etc., and some that are just another straight white woman's narrative about her body image problems. kat marie yoas' piece about being from a poor, "white trash" background in feminist academia was really, really good, as was Elizabeth Latty's piece on sexual violence between queer women. Also glad that polyamory got a mention in Dean Spade's piece. However, the whole anthology ended rather awkwardly with a piece on how to get the media to report progressive issues more accurately and fairly. It's really important stuff, but an odd way to close off a book of very personal and emotional essays.

[Liz Latty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy Crap this is the best book ever. If you haven't read it yet, your life is shallow and incomplete. Buy it now and be sure to read it cover to cover and read my essay like 3 or 4 times or at least until you have committed it to memory. You'll thank me.

[Eli]

I have a piece in this anthology. Read it!

[Cherie · Rating 3 out of 5]

B++ While a lot of these are quite interesting, I didn't find the book life affirming or life changing in any way. Not too many new things have been said; we don't need another anthology.

[Aster · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I appreciate the authors were quite diverse, not many of the stories really made me feel much, which considering this was a lot of personal essays, was disappointing. It also felt like a lot of them were like "I took a gender/women's studies class and became a feminist activist, and you can too!" I'm for activism, but something about it felt hollow to me. Not sure I would recommend this as a go-to feminist anthology.

[Monica · Rating 3 out of 5]

An uneven collection of essays- some are incredibly thoughtful and others feel more superficial!

[Sosa Coleone · Rating 5 out of 5]

God says bless you all

[Chinook]

Read in Bolton.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Melody is one of philly's finest writers. When I picked up the F-Word, I was absolutly amazed to see the famous people she managed to get interviews with. Margaret Cho, Gloria Steinem and Alix Olson are all in here, which makes this zine worth picking up. Melody is coming out with a book in November, which, based on this zine, will be a must-read. I liked the F-WORD because it focuses on positive action and the ability of young feminists everywhere to organize for issues like choice, women's liberation, and breaking out of the traditional thoughts of what it means to be a female or a male. There's also sex advice, book and music reviews, and a whole lot of other quick pieces that make this a worthwhile read.

[David]

I read only about half of this book, and thus can't rate the whole thing, but it has the usual strengths and weaknesses of an eclectic anthology. Lots of points of view on contentious topics, invariably resulting some interesting stuff, some banal stuff, and some weird stuff. (An early contender for the latter category is an essay that claims that "the heternormative family structure" - man, woman, kids - is "unhealthy" and a "technology of postindustrial late capitalism". An interesting reminder that although they're extremely rare, there are occasional people who are just as nuts as your average religious righty, but in the opposite direction.)

[c]

Fun Fact: I took a women's studies class with the editor of this anthology. I'm proud of how good her writing is, and really want to purchase her F-word zines.
Other Fun Fact: Some of the writers in this anthology represent exactly what I hate about contemporary young feminist writers (whiny; close-minded about who should be entitled to call themselves a feminist) so I am struggling to finish it.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overall a wonderful anthology, which challenges the reader to expand the realm of feminism and feminist issues while simultaneously calling for less division between groups of feminists. I particularly liked that many essays gave examples of/from activist work instead of relying on theory. Like any anthology, there are a few lemons, but overall this is an excellent addition to the feminism canon.

[Elyssa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciated the diversity of voices in this collection of essays, but I didn't find enough of them interesting to give this book four stars. I am glad that there are books like this and that the feminist movement is being revitalized for a new generation.

[Jenine Young · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few of the chapters made me roll my eyes, or were so far from what I know that I couldn't understand them and ended up skimming them, but overall very interesting collection of essays from various feminists.

[Tania Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

some of my favorites from this book:
for lovers and fighters - dean spade
a time to hole up and a time to kick ass - leah lakshmi piepzna-samarasinha
rice tight with beans - lenelle moise

[Jessie · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are some really good essays in this book and a lot of really bad essays. All in all, I admire the objective.

[Stephy · Rating 3 out of 5]

`The Newest New Wave in Lesbian activism says "We don't need no stinkin' new wave" With clarity and fun and a great seriousness that the world had best not ignore.

[lynze · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was mainly antecdotal, with only perspectives from the first person. I would say it is a useful supplement to more theoretical books such as Sisterhood is Powerful.

[Carrie]

essays

[Zahra AlQattan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good for those who don't know where feminism stands at the moment..

[KP · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent collection of essays about feminism and the various struggles in feminism.

[Petra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting collection of essays from young(er) feminists. Some incredibly moving.