postfeminism feminist. I am the Third Wave.” As she would later reflect, “Hill’s courage made me write
those words.”^6
This chapter focuses on feminists who, like Rebecca Walker, came of age in a United States
profoundly shaped by the movements for women’s rights described in this book’s earlier chapters,
describing the feminism they articulated and advocated in the 1990s and the early twenty-first century.
Born during and after the social upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s—and part of the two demographic
cohorts known as Generation X (born 1964–82) and the Millennial Generation (born 1982–2000)—this
group of activists grew up taking for granted many of the social, political, and economic gains achieved in
the decades prior to and surrounding their births. Born into a world in which at least a basic level of
gender equality had been achieved, raised to believe they could do anything boys could do, educated by
women’s studies programs, and offered opportunities never before available, women in this period
absorbed feminism all around them—in their homes, in their classrooms, in the media, and in the political
landscape they entered into as adults. For this group of women, feminism initially was more a mindset
than a movement. By the twenty-first century, however, as we shall see, a feminist movement was
resurfacing, albeit relying on new kinds of collective action and solidarity particular to its historical
moment.
While acknowledging their debt to the feminists who came before them, these feminist writers and
activists initially defined their feminism around generational difference and even hostility, stressing their
critiques of the earlier movement rather than their continuity with it. This generational focus was, in part,
a result of the fact that many of the most visible spokeswomen of this new feminism were the daughters of
1970s feminists—people like Rebecca Walker—and thus they often spoke of feminism as familial,
writing as daughters rejecting their mothers’ feminism. Their critiques of 1970s feminism rightly homed in
on its weakest points, such as its overwhelming whiteness and inability to create an interracial movement,
as well as its hostility to popular commercial culture. Yet other criticisms were only partially correct,
such as their view of the women’s liberation movement as predominantly anti-sexual and humorless.
In the twenty-first century, feminism in the United States shifted form. As it developed as both a set of
activist practices and a body of thought, it focused less on generational conflict and more on how to
address the political and social inequalities that remained even after a century of feminist activism. In the
aftermath of September 11, 2001, feminism became even more global, connecting feminists around the
world with the Internet technologies that emerged during this period, like blogs and social networks. It
focused its energies on issues such as sexuality, media representation, work-life balance, and violence
against women, as well as growing economic disparities. These issues are not new, of course, but both
the larger changes in our culture and the successes of the earlier feminist movements have shifted their
meaning. While connected to earlier movements to advance gender equality and social justice, this new
feminism was not a mass-based movement for social change like its 1970s predecessor discussed in
chapter 2; nor was it tied to concrete political and policy goals like the social justice feminisms
described in chapter 1.
Rebecca Walker as Emblem of the New Feminism
Rebecca Walker was an emblematic spokeswoman for her generation—the post-baby-boomer, Generation
X feminists who began calling themselves feminism’s “third wave”—inasmuch as she expressed the ideas
and perspectives found in much contemporary feminism. Born in 1969, daughter of African American
writer Alice Walker and goddaughter of white feminist icon Gloria Steinem, Rebecca Walker was raised