The first principle—that feminism must be polyvocal and acknowledge multiple perspectives—
developed out of a critique of second-wave feminism and the perception that it minimized differences
among women in order to assert a monolithic “sisterhood.” This “sisterhood” was meant to include all
women but in actuality most often represented only white, middle-class, heterosexual women and their
concerns. Developing this critique through their study of the earlier women’s movement and through
insights from feminist and queer theory regarding the instability of identity categories—including gender
—younger feminists were skeptical of any claims to a universal “woman” around which feminism should
organize. In order to avoid the presumption of speaking on behalf of all women, post-1990 feminists
tended to describe feminism in individual terms—each person defining feminism for herself, in a first-
person singular voice. This has led to a polyvocal form of feminism, made up of many feminisms, plural,
rather than any singular definition. Most feminists today, of all ages and generations, now recognize that
the category “women” is a diverse group and that no one woman can represent her entire gender.
Although this first principle is grounded in a belief in the value of diversity and multiplicity—that
feminism is strongest when it combines the voices of many rather than just a few—the expression of
individualized forms of feminism has led to a concern that feminism as a concept is now so watered down
as to be meaningless. If feminism is merely whatever one defines it to be—merely the assertion of a
woman’s autonomy and choice—what differentiates it from the ideology of individualism that shapes so
much of the United States? If we are all doing feminism in our own individual ways, how can we work
collectively to effect structural change? What does feminism have to offer as a political stance on the
world? These are questions that post-1990 feminists continue to debate and work out through their
engagement with various political issues, but they have also led to the charge that this generation of
feminists are nothing but navel-gazing narcissists, as famously depicted in a 1998 Time cover story on the
new generation of activists entitled “Feminism: It’s All About Me!”
The second principle—that feminism must be intersectional and acknowledge that gender justice is
inextricably tied to other social justice movements—also reflects younger feminists’ study of the earlier
women’s movement. As discussed in chapter 1, feminism’s history of understanding the links between
gender, race, and class oppression goes back at least a century. Since the 1970s, U.S. feminists of color
have developed a large body of work on the concept of intersectionality, or the idea that identity
categories intersect and mutually shape each other: in other words, gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality,
socioeconomic class, and nationality, among other identity categories, never function in isolation but
always work as interconnected categories of oppression and privilege. Feminism, therefore, must be a
broad-based social justice movement concerned with a range of issues that affect women’s (and men’s)
opportunities and rights. In this way, younger feminists try to practice a “feminism without borders,” to
use theorist Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s phrase; they attempt to see feminism as being intertwined with a
broad agenda of political issues, since true gender justice can only be achieved through addressing
racism, economic injustice, xenophobia, and homophobia.
Although this second principle has broadened the scope of contemporary feminism in exciting and
much-needed ways, some have wondered whether this broadening—like the individualization of
definitions of feminism—has led to a dilution of feminism as gender shifts from being its sole focus to
being merely one part of its agenda. Others, including young feminists of color, have questioned whether
their white generational peers have really expanded their vision of feminism to include a commitment to
combating racism and white supremacy. As African American feminist Veronica Chambers writes of her
Generation X college classmates, “The young women I went to school with, for all their notions of
feminism, still basked in the glory and privilege of their whiteness.”^55 Chambers’s experience suggests
that while younger white feminists may wish to see themselves as more enlightened about race than were