Echidne on the 4th Wave of Feminism

My Comments:

I'm sorry - I'm gonna ramble a bit.

Hillary's case has at least started the conversation we should have been having all along. I don't think of feminism as an after thought - it's the foundation of all other forms of social justice. There's going to be a building wave because women are learning to use the internet to weave new kinds of webs of power. We communicate better, quicker, no matter where we are or what our resources are. We've never had such unfettered access to such a populist medium.

Women are 54% of the population. Men are less than 46% when you allow for the number of transgender people that lie in the center of the continuum. The state of women and their children is the state of the entire race. No culture can prosper when over half of it's population is hobbled or oppressed, especially when that group has the primary responsibility for raising children. If women are impoverished in any way, then the entire culture becomes so.

All of the social movements have been driven by women - the move for abolition, prohibition, suffrage, civil rights, the labor movement. What are the names we remember for these changes? Harriet Tubman, Carrie Nation, Susan B. Anthony, Rosa Parks, Norma Ray. I'm not saying they are exclusively responsible, but the foundations of those movements were built on the backs of women who had simply had enough and took back their own power. If you want to heal racism, feminism has to be a part of it, or it won't work. If you want to build a labor union, you've got to get the women on your side. When you control the next generation, you determine the future.

One generation relaxed and the next generation didn't get it because they were rebelling against the rebellion. We're into a new generation now, and they're sitting at home watching Chris Matthews talk about how shrill Hillary's voice is - and they're pissed. It's about damned time. I'm so happy to see it. I'm not just looking for a wave, I want a tsunami, and I just might get it.