Campus Voices: What is a modern feminist?

From elementary to high school graduation, I went to an all-girls school. As such, I grew up debating and discussing the different movements of feminism throughout the history of the United States. 

When I came to Lehigh, I noticed the hesitant way many people in the community broached the fight for women’s rights and gender equality, often glossing over the grueling challenges past activists — and women in general — faced. 

When I discovered the community at Lehigh — a university that went coeducational a little over 50 years ago — is shying away from feminism, I was shocked.

There aren’t enough feminists on Lehigh’s campus, because there isn’t enough casual social discussion about feminist topics and history. People are also scared to say the word “feminist,” not because they don’t believe in equal rights for women, but because they don’t know what it means. 

Part of the problem is that feminism is a fluctuating, evolving concept, changing from generation to generation and from wave to wave.

The history of feminism is tricky to navigate, so many people shy away from the gritty details. This then causes the societal understanding of “feminist” to be the default definition, but it shouldn’t be. This often flimsy idea people have leads to misunderstandings about what it really means to be a feminist. 

Hidden stigmas have evolved between each wave of feminism. From people thinking they can’t be feminists because they aren’t female-identifying to people avoiding outwardly declaring themselves feminists due to ill-fitting stereotypes, these gaps arise from a lack of understanding about how past feminist initiatives affect our day-to-day lives. 

At Lehigh, we can begin to correct these misunderstandings by embracing and discussing the impact of feminism. 

For example, the first wave of feminism in the U.S. was the Women’s Suffrage Movement, which began in the early 1900s and eventually gained white women the right to vote in 1920 with the 19th Amendment. We can clearly see the impact of the first wave as we look to elections, as the voices of women make up a sizable chunk of registered voters. 

The first wave is the simplest to discuss since it focused primarily on suffrage. In contrast, the second wave wasn’t just advocating for political equality, as feminists were also pushing for social equality. 

It took place from 1960 to the early ‘80s, touching on the topics of sex, relationships, reproductive rights and domestic labor. The movement was radical enough to startle people into creating myths surrounding second-wave feminists that persist today, such as bra burnings. 

This myth emerged when some second-wave activists, in protest against the Miss America pageant’s patriarchal and demeaning view of women, threw away objects they considered symbolic of women’s objectification — like bras or Playboy magazines. 

This wave was especially significant for Lehigh, where the social climate was concurrently shifting dramatically. 

In 1971, Lehigh became a co-ed school, marking a pivotal moment in its history. The societal changes brought about by the second wave of feminism helped shape the university’s evolving stance on gender equality, and these waves — along with those that followed — continued to fuel the broader movement for women’s rights on campus.

The third wave began in the early ‘90s. It brought with it new terms, such as “intersectionality” coined by Kimberle Crenshaw, a scholar and thinker on gender and critical race theory. This became the basis for including non-white and trans women and their unique struggles in the fight for feminism.

Intellectually, the third wave worked on helping women speak out against sexual harassment in the workplace and getting women into positions of power, politically or otherwise. Aesthetically, it burst into the public mind through music, specifically through a type of underground feminist punk movement which was colloquially called “Riot Grrrls.” 

It is here that we can see how one movement directly influences the next. A key difference between the second-wavers and the third-wavers is that the second-wave feminists fought to be called “women,” not “girls,” in order to establish themselves as dignified equals — for example, not being called “college girls” anymore but rather college women who are learning alongside college men.

On the other hand, the third-wave feminists embraced their girliness. They also sought to show that doing away with femininity is inherently misogynistic and that femininity should be thought of on equal terms with masculinity and androgyny. This outlook, in my opinion, is a key part of feminism and is brought over to feminist thought today. 

The fourth wave, what we are currently experiencing, is argued to be online — a place where feminists can organize and encourage debate. As the internet brings forward issues otherwise glossed over, fourth-wave feminism seeks to include queer, sex-positive, trans-inclusive and body-positive thoughts. 

Movements like #MeToo and slut walks bring people together across the world to speak out and encourage feminist thought. Lehigh even has its own annual sLUt walk, organized by Break the Silence to combat slut shaming, victim blaming and rape culture on campus.

But, even with opportunities like these, Lehigh still lacks continuous, casual social discussions about feminism. 

Until the Lehigh community no longer shies away from the term “feminist,” it will be difficult to recognize that the fight for equity is just as important and relevant today as it was in the past.

Campus Voices is a new subsection of The Brown and White where campus community members can submit or work with editors to write opinion pieces. If interested, contact Julia Contino at jpc425@lehigh.edu.