The New German Feminisms: Of Wetlands and Alpha-Girls

Scharff, Christina

doi:10.1057/9780230294523_18

Cited by 13 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…After a quiet period, feminism came back onto the public agenda in Germany in 2008. This year saw the publication of several popular books written by young female authors who called for a new feminism (Scharff, 2011). Interestingly, feminism has also been endorsed recently in popular texts in Britain, such as Walter's Living Dolls 2010and Kat Banyard's The Equality Illusion (2010).…”

Section: Researching Feminist Dis-identificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…All research participants gave me their informed consent before we had a guided conversation that lasted between one and one-and-a-half hours. Elsewhere, I explore the ways in which my positioning in relation to class, my sexuality, and my identity as a young feminist impacted on the researcher–researched relationship (Scharff, 2012). The interviews began with questions about the research participants' current situation and background.…”

Section: Researching Feminist Dis-identificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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‘It is a colour thing and a status thing, rather than a gender thing’: Negotiating difference in talk about feminism

Scharff

2011

Feminism & Psychology

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Young women's rejection of feminism is well-recognized if seemingly paradoxical. Based on 40 qualitative interviews with a diverse group of German and British research participants, this article adopts a performative approach to enhance our understanding of young women's relationship with feminism. First, the article argues that rejections of feminism as anti-man, lesbian or unfeminine should be read as performances of femininity. Second, the article regards performances of femininity as racialized and classed. It traces how race and class are assumed in talk about feminism and examines how young women's positionings intersect with feminist dis-identification. The construction of feminists as unfeminine, for example, posed particular challenges to women who were positioned at a distance from notions of ‘respectable femininity’ because of their class background. While the relationship between young women's positionings and stances towards feminism is not predetermined, the article investigates how gender identity, sexuality, race and class matter in engagements with feminism.

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Section: Researching Feminist Dis-identificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Researching Feminist Dis-identificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘It is a colour thing and a status thing, rather than a gender thing’: Negotiating difference in talk about feminism

Scharff

2011

Feminism & Psychology

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“…To be sure, it is not a new move to link feminism with femininity in an attempt to make the former more popular in a heteronormative context. In the late 2000s, for example, a ‘new feminism’ was proclaimed in Germany whose alleged ‘newness’ consisted in the fact that it was no longer anti-man and anti-femininity (Scharff, 2011). This new feminism had many problematic features, such as an individualist and neoliberal outlook, and a lack of engagement with differences amongst women.…”

Section: Feminism and Femininitymentioning

confidence: 99%

On (not) wearing pink

2019

European Journal of Women's Studies

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On (not) wearing pink Feminists Don't Wear Pink and Other Lies is a book curated by the writer, journalist and blogger Scarlett Curtis. The Sunday Times Top 5 bestselling book, published in October 2018, includes writing by 52 women on what feminism means to them. It features contributors who are celebrities, including many actors (e.g. Keira Knightley and Emma Watson), actor and stand-up comedian Lolly Adefope, comedian and feminist writer Deborah Frances-White, as well as activists (e.g. Alicia Garza, Trisha Shetty), writers (e.g. Helen Fielding as Bridget Jones), journalist/author/performer Rhyannon Styles, models (e.g. Adwoa Aboah) and entrepreneurs (e.g. Whitney Wolfe Herd and Sharmadean Reid). As someone who has studied negotiations of feminism since the mid-2000s, I was intrigued when the book came out and recently had a chance to read it. My initial response was one of feeling slightly overwhelmed: I had to google a number of contributors, which made me feel utterly out of touch. I was also irritated by some entries' focus on entrepreneurialism, individual empowerment, and felt (and continue to feel) I needed more time to make sense of the book's attempt to include a range of women's voices in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, national/geographic perspectives, class, sexual orientation and trans*gender. In this editorial, I will try to make sense of my feeling of irritation by focusing on the ways in which Scarlett Curtis's introduction constructs the relationship between feminism and femininity. In previous work (Scharff, 2012), I explored repudiations of feminism amongst a diverse group of young German and British women. Various factors accounted for these repudiations, one of which is particularly relevant to this editorial: feminism and femininity were frequently constructed as mutually exclusive. The women whom I interviewed in the mid-2000s did not want to claim the label feminism out of fear of being considered unfeminine. Against this backdrop, I was intrigued by Curtis's book title, Feminists Don't Wear Pink and Other Lies. The title's allusion to femininity through reference to the colour pink made me wonder whether constructions of the relationship between feminism and femininity have shifted in recent years and, if so, what this shift signifies politically. I will begin by situating my reflections on Feminists Don't Wear Pink and Other Lies within current feminist scholarship on the rise, unprecedented popularity and luminosity of feminism in recent years (Banet-Weiser, 2018; Gill, 2016; Rottenberg, 2018). As I will argue, the scholarship on feminism's recent popularity raises a range of important questions which, for example, relate to the resonances between neoliberalism and popular feminism (Banet-Weiser, 2018) or, indeed, to the rise of neoliberal feminism (Rottenberg, 2018). Given the short length of this editorial, and its exploratory nature, I will limit myself to exploring how Scarlett Curtis constructs the relationship between feminism

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“…This is particularly evident in discussions of third wave feminism which has been criticised for pitting younger against older feminists, for not taking into account the different temporality of feminist activism around the world (Mackay, 2011;Woodhull, 2003) and for being inaccurate even as a descriptive term and therefore failing to reflect the diversity of feminism (Nicholson, 2013;Thompson, 2013). Furthermore, it is culturally specific: it originates in the US but outside the US and, to a lesser extent, the UK, it does not have much currency (Scharff, 2011) with many feminist activists in the UK rejecting the idea that they are part of a third wave (Evans and Chamberlain, 2015;Mackay, 2015;Kempson, 2015). Much of the antagonism amongst activists to the idea of a third wave comes from their identification of it with post-or 'choice' feminism (Mackay, 2015;Kempson, 2015), an association that is also evident amongst academic feminists (see Aune and Holyoak, this issue).…”

Section: Waves and Cyclesmentioning

confidence: 99%

New British feminisms, UK Feminista and young women’s activism

Charles

Wadia

2017

Feminist Theory

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Over the past few years we have witnessed a sharp resurgence in feminist activism as young women have become increasingly interested in feminist ideas as a means of making sense of their lives. This resurgence in feminist practice is evidenced by the formation of myriad groups and networks across Britain and the initiation of various feminist projects and campaigns, reported regularly and widely in local and national media. This article examines the renaissance of this new feminism through the example of one of the most active and publicly visible organisations, UK Feminista. It draws on ethnographic research into young women's feminist activism, exploring the emergence of UK Feminista as part of this new wave of feminist activism in Britain. We argue that the wave metaphor has multifarious meanings and that to understand how the political practice of a small feminist organisation contributes to the amplification of this wave of feminist activism it is helpful to draw on concepts developed within social movement theory such as cycles of protest, repertoires of action and collective identities. We show how UK Feminista mobilises young women and provides resources to existing and new feminist organisations and activist groups, commenting particularly on its use of the Internet and social media as a mobilising device. We explore the role of the Internet in young women's engagement with feminism, the forms of activism in which they take part and the importance of feminist cultural memory to the construction of a collective feminist identity. Our analysis reveals the significant part played by a small mobilising structure, UK Feminista, in the resurgence of feminist activism in the UK.

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The New German Feminisms: Of Wetlands and Alpha-Girls

Cited by 13 publications

References 7 publications

‘It is a colour thing and a status thing, rather than a gender thing’: Negotiating difference in talk about feminism

‘It is a colour thing and a status thing, rather than a gender thing’: Negotiating difference in talk about feminism

On (not) wearing pink

New British feminisms, UK Feminista and young women’s activism

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