The Three Waves Of The Feminist Movement

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Professor Spurgas
WMST 200: Issues in Feminism
Midterm
March 2 2017

Feminism is the acceptance of people as equals regardless of gender. Certain branches of feminism go past this and are even more accepting of people and their differences. For example, Intersectional Feminism accepts people regardless of gender, sexuality, race, and disabilities. This is a wonderful ideology that all people should stand up for and believe in. There is nothing valid that can be used to disagree with it. Throughout my experience, those that are against feminism are unaware of the situations that people encounter on a day to day basis. Throughout the three waves of the feminist movement there have been a lot of accomplishments.
The first wave, also known as the gender reform wave, of the feminist movement started in the 1830’s. It went until the early 1900’s. Primarily the first wave dealt with de jure matters. One of the main goals of this movement was to gain the right to vote. This was not achieved nationally in the United States of America until 1920. A multitude of European countries gave women suffrage rights after the first world war. This was to repay the effort
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It’s main contributions to the feminist movement was the realization of the presence of a patriarchy and it’s exploitation of women in society. Unfortunately, it caused a distrust of men. This is due to the belief that men were prone to committing rape and sexual harassment in order to keep the patriarchy in command. Lesbian feminism allowed for lesbians to feel valued and visible in the eyes of their fellow feminist. However, it caused straight women to feel alienated due to its harsh views on the love between opposite genders. Cultural and Psychoanalytic stressed the value of a greater involvement between fathers and their children. It ignored the cultures that were not Western