Real Grrrl Power
“You don’t have to be anti-man to be pro-woman” – Jane Galvin Lewis
I’m a feminist. It’s not seen as fashionable to admit that these days, I know, but quite frankly, I don’t care. In fact, I was born a feminist; the fourth generation of women in my family to so define themselves. I am the great-grand-niece of a first wave feminist, the daughter of a second-waver, and I hit my teens just as the third wave began to break. But wait, I hear some of you cry, what’s with all that wave business? Surely a feminist is a feminist? Well, yes – but, as with every type of political or cultural movement, feminism has developed over time in a number of different historical phases.
Put very simply, the first wave of feminists were the suffragettes; the brave and often very radical women who campaigned for female suffrage during the late 19th and early 20th centuries who fought against the widely-held belief that women were too irrational and easily influenced to exercise the vote (often seen to be caused by that uniquely female catch-all diagnosis of hysteria, which was allegedly the result of a ‘wandering womb’ – no, really!). Having found that their attempts at peaceful protest were being frustrated at every turn, in Britain some of these women broke away from their less radical sisters (the suffragists) and got seriously fierce, beginning a campaign of civil disobedience that included breaking windows, chaining themselves to the railings outside Downing Street, setting fire to post boxes and, in one particularly tragic case, dying after throwing herself under the hooves of the king’s horse during the 1913 Derby.
Many suffragettes were arrested, imprisoned and force-fed in jail after going on hunger strike (look up the so-called ‘Cat and Mouse Act’ of 1913 for the full horror of this). Despite a great deal of public and official disapproval of the suffragettes’ actions, theoretical approval for granting women the vote was actually in place by the time World War One broke out in 1914. However, much as with the contemporaneous idea of Irish Home Rule, the war got in the way of this policy being immediately implemented, as the war effort became the government’s major priority. It is often and erroneously believed that British women gained the vote in 1918 only as a direct result of their war work; they took on the (often dangerous) jobs left behind by men called up to fight in the trenches in order to keep the home front functioning, and certainly did their cause no harm at all by doing so. British women over the age of 30 were enfranchised in 1918, albeit on a property qualification. Women had to wait another ten years before they got the vote on equal terms with men, thus formally ending the first wave of feminism in Britain.
“Don’t compromise yourself. You are all you’ve got” – Janis Joplin
The second wave of feminism is mainly associated with the 1960s and 1970s (although it is arguable that it still continues, and co-exists – sometimes uneasily – with the third wave), and with a much wider range of issues, including day-to-day discrimination, legally enshrined inequalities between the sexes, the status of women within the family and the workplace, sexuality and women’s reproductive rights. It is this wave of feminism that the now often dismissive descriptive ‘Women’s Lib’ was coined for and is still usually associated with (see below).
The 1960s, in particular, are often associated with peace and love and civil rights and equality for all, but that certainly wasn’t always the case. Many women were politicised by the civil rights and anti-war movements of the period, but soon discovered (then as now, sadly) that sexism and discrimination were rife even in these new, utopian activist sub-cultures, whether they subscribed to the hippy ethos or not. Even hippy chicks themselves often found that they were still expected to play the ‘little wifey’ role; expected to do the cooking, roll the joints, stand around silently looking pretty while the men talked politics, and open her legs whenever (and for whoever) she was asked to – in fact, a lot of young women involved in the hippy movement found the idea and practice of free love very coercive, one-sided and not very liberating (see Jonathon Green’s excellent oral history of the era, Days In The Life: Voices From The English Underground 1961-1971, for some interesting examples of this from the British underground press). The fightback, in part, began here, and these were rightfully and righteously angry women.
Not all of the women of the second wave were from the alternative community, but it soon became clear to many women from all walks of life that the social, cultural and political inequalities they were encountering were inextricably linked, and that feminism meant far more than just the fight for equality of suffrage. For the second wave (and beyond), feminism was about women’s lives on every level. The achievements of the second wave were many, they fought to give us equal pay (in theory), abortion rights, paid maternity leave, child care provision and equality in divorce law, amongst other groundbreaking rights for women – and many of these are now rights that today’s women take for granted.
“You don’t have to signal a social conscience by looking like a frump. Lace knickers won’t hasten the holocaust, you can ban the bomb in a feather boa just as well as without, and a mild interest in the length of hemlines doesn’t necessarily disqualify you from reading Das Kapital and agreeing with every word” – Elizabeth Bibesco
Exactly. For me personally, feminism doesn’t have to mean the now-clichéd rad-fem sporting unshaven armpits, short hair, dungarees, no make-up and a shouty misandry (although if all that’s your thing, please go right ahead. Apart from the misandry. Obviously). I may usually be seen slobbing around in battered old jeans and flip flops, but I see no conflict in being a feminist and enjoying dressing up – and I don’t dress for men, I dress for me. Those who know me well will be aware of my love of shoes (I’m currently obsessing over a pair of red and white polka dot Mary Janes with a six inch heel – I could never walk in them, but they’re just gorgeous), and that I own a very large box stuffed full of make-up (not that I wear any of it very often; but black nail polish is essential – when my (straight) male friends aren’t nicking it off me, that is!). I choose to dress how I want, and I see that choice of how I appear to the outside world as being part of my feminism.
Despite having been brought up in a household that subscribed (and still subscribes) to second wave principles, my own feminist awakening came with what is sometimes considered the starting point of the third wave: the Riot Grrrl movement. Admittedly, I got into it through the boys – as a massive Nirvana fan, I couldn’t ignore Kurt Cobain’s references in interviews to girl bands like Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, The Raincoats and The Slits. I loved the fact that here were women who rocked out just as hard as the men; and, in some cases, beat the men at their own game (I spent most of my teenage years wanting to be Donita Sparks from the kick-ass, tomboyish grrrl-metal band L7 – actually, scrub that, even at the age of 33 I still want to be her!). For someone like me, a politicised and very obsessive music fan who often found herself dismissed and marginalised by male music fans, the Riot Grrrl movement opened my eyes to the fact that it didn’t have to be like that, that I could get up there and make my own art with reference to my own life, without needing to subscribe to the dominant male worldview I saw all around me. And that was – still is – bloody inspiring.
“Because women’s work is never done and is underpaid or unpaid or boring or repetitious and we’re the first to get fired and what we look like is more important than what we do and if we get raped it’s our fault and if we get beaten we must have provoked it and if we raise our voices we’re nagging bitches and if we enjoy sex we’re nymphos and if we don’t we’re frigid and if we love women it’s because we can’t get a “real” man and if we ask our doctor too many questions we’re neurotic and/or pushy and if we expect childcare we’re selfish and if we stand up for our rights we’re aggressive and “unfeminine” and if we don’t we’re typical weak females and if we want to get married we’re out to trap a man and if we don’t we’re unnatural and because we still can’t get an adequate safe contraceptive but men can walk on the moon and if we can’t cope or don’t want a pregnancy we’re made to feel guilty about abortion and…for lots of other reasons we are part of the women’s liberation movement” – Author unknown, quoted in The Torch, 14 September 1987
