Reading between the Lines: A Discursive Analysis of the Billie Jean King vs. Bobby Riggs “Battle of the Sexes”

2000 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 386-402 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy E. Spencer
Keyword(s):  
Third Wave Feminism ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Women's Sport ◽  
Discursive Analysis ◽  
Women In Sport ◽  
Battle Of The Sexes ◽  
Second Wave Feminism ◽  
The Status ◽  
Second Wave

1998 marked the 25-year anniversary of the historic “Battle of the Sexes” between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. That match has been credited with enhancing the status of girls and women in sport (Frey, 1998: Hahn. 1998: Nelson, 1998). Although the match was staged during the conjunctural moment now referred to as second wave feminism, it was commemorated within the context of third wave feminism. In this paper. I revisit discourses written about the Battle of the Sexes in 1973. Although it continues to be articulated as a watershed moment in women’s sport, recent characterizations of the match reflect transformations from second to third wave feminist discourses.

Ovid's Presence in Contemporary Women's Writing

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona Cox
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Third Wave Feminism ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Classical Reception ◽  
Second Wave Feminism ◽  
Mary Zimmerman ◽  
Marie Darrieussecq ◽  
Gender Boundaries ◽  
Second Wave ◽  
New Phase

This monograph explores an understudied aspect of classical reception—the extraordinary response to Ovid on the part of contemporary women writers. To date, work on classical reception has focused predominantly upon the second-wave feminism preoccupations of recovering the silenced female voices and establishing a woman’s perspective within canonical works. This monograph extends this work by examining the intersections between Ovid’s imaginative universe and the political and aesthetic agenda of third-wave feminism. Ovid enters a new phase of feminism which emphasizes the imperatives of social responsibility and democratization of learning, while also exploring the fluidity of gender boundaries and the ways in which new virtual universes have modified our attitudes to both sexuality and fame. Authors selected for particular case studies include A. S. Byatt, Ali Smith, Marina Warner, Yoko Tawada, Alice Oswald, Saviana Stanescu, Mary Zimmerman, Jo Shapcott, Marie Darrieussecq, Josephine Balmer, Averill Curdy, Clare Pollard, Michèle Roberts, and Jane Alison. Through an analysis of the novels, memoirs, short stories, poems, plays, and translations/adaptations of these writers, Cox opens up the field of classical reception to third-wave feminism, while also casting new light upon the extraordinary plasticity of Ovid’s writing and the acuity of his psychological imagination.

Analyzing Media Representations of Sportswomen—Expanding the Conceptual Boundaries Using a Postfeminist Sensibility

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 199-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim Toffoletti
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Female Athlete ◽  
Female Athletes ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
Third Wave Feminism ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Sport Media ◽  
Women In Sport ◽  
Media Institutions ◽  
Media Research

This article seeks to expand the conceptual boundaries of sport media research by investigating the utility of a postfeminist sensibility for analyzing depictions of women in sport. Rosalind Gill’s (2007) notion of a postfeminist sensibility is situated within UK-led feminist critiques of gendered neoliberalism in popular culture and offers a conceptual lens through which sports scholars might interrogate the complex and contradictory media landscape that often simultaneously marginalizes and empowers sportswomen. In highlighting postfeminism as a sensibility, this article makes visible the ways in which depictions of sportswomen as sexy and strong reorients responsibility for the sexualization of female athletes away from media institutions and toward the female athlete themselves. It also explains how a postfeminist sensibility differs from third wave feminism—a related framework popular among sports feminists seeking to respond to ambivalent and complex renderings of contemporary sporting femininity.

Charting the Currents of the Third Wave

Hypatia ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 29-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine M. Orr
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Third Wave Feminism ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Popular Press ◽  
The Third ◽  
Punk Music ◽  
Second Wave

The term “third wave” within contemporary feminism presents some initial difficulties in scholarly investigation. Located in popular-press anthologies, tines, punk music, and cyberspace, many third wave discourses constitute themselves as a break with both second wave and academic feminisms; a break problematic for both generations of feminists. The emergence of third wave feminism offers academic feminists an opportunity to rethink the context of knowledge production and the mediums through which we disseminate our work.

Third-Wave Feminism and the Defense of “Choice”

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 255-261 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Claire Snyder-Hall
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Sexual Pleasure ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Male Dominance ◽  
Feminist Movement ◽  
Third Wave Feminism ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Gender Oppression ◽  
The Right ◽  
Second Wave

How should feminist theorists respond when women who claim to be feminists make “choices” that seemingly prop up patriarchy, like posing for Playboy, eroticizing male dominance, or advocating wifely submission? This article argues that the conflict between the quest for gender equality and the desire for sexual pleasure has long been a challenge for feminism. In fact, the second-wave of the American feminist movement split over issues related to sexuality. Feminists found themselves on opposite sides of a series of contentious debates about issues such as pornography, sex work, and heterosexuality, with one side seeing evidence of gender oppression and the other opportunities for sexual pleasure and empowerment. Since the mid-1990s, however, a third wave of feminism has developed that seeks to reunite the ideals of gender equality and sexual freedom. Inclusive, pluralistic, and non-judgmental, third-wave feminism respects the right of women to decide for themselves how to negotiate the often contradictory desires for both gender equality and sexual pleasure. While this approach is sometimes caricatured as uncritically endorsing whatever a woman chooses to do as feminist, this essay argues that third-wave feminism actually exhibits not a thoughtless endorsement of “choice,” but rather a deep respect for pluralism and self-determination.

scholarly journals Antisocial Feminism? Shulamith Firestone, Monique Wittig and Proto-Queer Theory

Paragraph ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 364-379
Author(s):  
Lisa Downing
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Monique Wittig ◽  
Second Wave Feminism ◽  
The Family ◽  
Feminist Perspectives ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Second Wave

Recent iterations of feminist theory and activism, especially intersectional, ‘third-wave’ feminism, have cast much second-wave feminism as politically unacceptable in failing to centre the experiences of less privileged subjects than the often white, often middle-class names with which the second wave is usually associated. While bearing those critiques in mind, this article argues that some second-wave writers, exemplified by Shulamith Firestone and Monique Wittig, may still offer valuable feminist perspectives if viewed through the anti-normative lens of queer theory. Queer resists the reification of identity categories. It focuses on resistance to hegemonic norms, rather than on group identity. By viewing Wittig's and Firestone's critique of the institutions of the family, reproduction, maternity, and work as proto-queer — and specifically proto-antisocial queer — it argues for a feminism that refuses to shore up identity, that rejects groupthink, and that articulates meaningfully the crucial place of the individual in the collective project of feminism.

1975 The Year of Women

Making Waves ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 33-50
Author(s):  
Diana Holmes ◽  
Imogen Long
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Student Movement ◽  
The Political ◽  
Second Wave Feminism ◽  
The Status ◽  
Cultural Themes ◽  
Impossible Task ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second Wave

The relationship between 1970s French radical feminists (the MLF) and Françoise Giroud, the first ‘Minister for Women’ in France, was a difficult one. Second-wave feminism in France was grounded in the contestation of the status quo, in the wake of the 1960s student movement out of which some of the groups emerged. Being part of the political establishment was therefore in itself an anathema to some second-wave feminists, as can be seen, for example, by satirical feminist films mocking Giroud’s role and her interventions. Through the prism of 1975, officially declared ‘International Women’s Year’ by the United Nations, this chapter explores the key campaigning and cultural themes of the MLF and their relationship to Giroud’smore reformist and, arguably, impossible task as Minister for Women.

Reframing postmodern planning with feminist social theory: Toward “anti-essentialist norms”

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ihnji Jon
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Planning Theory ◽  
Third Wave Feminism ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Ethical Considerations ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Status ◽  
Political Solidarity

This article is concerned with the current developments in planning theory literature, with regard to its extensive focus on flexibility and process. When emphasizing the open-endedness and procedural validity of planning, planning theorists do not seem to consider ethical considerations about the results of planning outcomes. This is understandable given that postmodernism and its ardent defense of “open-endedness” is often considered to contradict any prescriptive nuances. However, I argue that normativity of planning is possible within the postmodern paradigm and that postmodern concepts and theoretical standpoints can propose a basis for normativity. To demonstrate this, I adopt the works of political theorists who have addressed normativity and political solidarity within the postmodern paradigm (anti-essentialist, anti-Cartesian), most of whom are inspired by the future paths of feminism. To be clear, what I refer as “feminism” is about not only defending the status of women as a legal category, but also how to construct political solidarity against inequalities—without essentialist categorizations or a priori conceptualizations. Using the ideas of Young (second-/third-wave feminism), Laclau and Mouffe (post-Marxism), Mouffe (post-Marxism/third-wave feminism), and Butler (third-wave feminism/body politics), I outline what could be considered “anti-essentialist norms.” Based on these norms, a planner can judge which people and whose voices—which social groups or “serial collectives”—should be prioritized and heard first, in order to promote a more inclusive and just urban space. The three anti-essentialist norms that I propose are (1) taking into account the historicity of social relations, (2) having a modest attitude toward what we claim as the representation of “the public,” and (3) recognizing a human interdependency that leads to pursuing future-orientedness in a political project.

The Decentering of Second Wave Feminism and the Rise of the Third Wave

2005 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Archer Mann ◽  
Douglas J. Huffman
Keyword(s):  
Third Wave ◽  
The Third ◽  
Second Wave Feminism ◽  
Second Wave

The Status of Women in Sport-Talk Radio: A Survey of Directors

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 409-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Hardin ◽  
Dunja Antunovic ◽  
Steve Bien-Aimé ◽  
Ruobing Li
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Talk Radio ◽  
Women's Sport ◽  
Sports Media ◽  
Sport Media ◽  
Women In Sport ◽  
The Status ◽  
Employment Of Women ◽  
Token Status ◽  
The Impact

Sport-talk radio has been recognized, along with other forms of sports media, as a masculine space where women’s value as athletes and fans is diminished. Little is known, however, about the gendered dynamics of sport-talk-radio production. This study used a survey of programming directors from across the United States to explore issues around the employment of women and coverage of women’s sport by local stations. Results suggest that many stations do not employ any women, although more than half do. Still, leadership positions belong primarily to men. Programming directors see little value in women’s sport for their listeners and make decisions that reinforce their vision of an audience that also sees little value in women’s sport. Using a feminist lens, the authors speculate on the impact that women in positions of power could have on programming if their representation moved beyond token status, while acknowledging the realities of the sport-media workplace.

scholarly journals The Mothers, Daughters, Sisters: The Intergenerational Transmission of Womanhood in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-85
Author(s):  
Ewelina Feldman Kołodziejuk
Keyword(s):  
Intergenerational Transmission ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Feminist Movement ◽  
Third Wave Feminism ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Women's Liberation Movement ◽  
The Third ◽  
Liberation Movement ◽  
Fourth Wave ◽  
Second Wave

The article reads The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments as a response to changes in the feminist movement. Less radical than their mothers’ generation, second-wave feminists’ daughters often abandoned the struggle for equality and focused on homemaking. Nevertheless, the 1990s saw a resurgence of the women’s liberation movement known as the third wave. These feminism(s) significantly redefined the notion of womanhood and emphasised the diversity of the female. After 2010, critics argue, third-wave feminism entered the fourth wave. This analysis of The Handmaid’s Tale focuses on Offred’s relationship with her mother, which is representative of the wider phenomenon of the Backlash. It investigates how the mother and her generation influenced the maternal choices of the Handmaid and discusses the trauma of child removal suffered by Offred. The final section examines The Testaments through the lens of third-wave feminism and analyzes the plight of Offred’s daughters, focusing on their attitudes towards womanhood and maternity.

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