As our major goal this year is to explore a new vision for Women's and Gender Studies, we need a place to talk and think together on a more regular basis than face-to-face committee meetings would allow -- even if I were there. I have not done a collective blog before, so, if you have, please let us benefit from your experience.
Having grown up in the heat of the 1970s feminism, I felt deeply the oppression of girls and women and committed to that social justice cause. I recognize now that that time period treated men and women as homogenous groups and that the front-burner issue of gender, while still very much central to feminist theories, has changed character as we consider other, more contemporary social categories alongside it.
I have been spending time reading and expanding my own understanding of Third Wave Feminism and its relationship to issues of gender and sexuality. One of the understandings I have constructed relates to the discipline of women's studies and the diversification of the field so that we can take into account a more complex understanding of social identity variables that move us beyond gender to include race, ethnicity, sexualities, social class, education and age -- I see this as an inevitable and positive evolution, especially since the Second Wave movement was narrowly focused on white, mostly middle-class (although I grew up in poverty), heterosexual women.
What are others thinking about these issues?
Best, Linda
