A Third Wave Agenda

If you can’t tell by now, I am a huge admirer of Jennifer Baumgardner. Needless to say, I was re-reading her book Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future, and I came across a list in which she states what she thinks are the Third Wave feminist priorities in regard to activism.

THIRD WAVE AGENDA: A THIRTEEN-POINT AGENDA:
1. To out unacknowledged feminists, specifically those who are younger, so that generation X can become a visible movement and, further, a voting block of 18-24 year olds.

2. To safeguard a woman’s right to bear or not to bear a child, regardless of circumstances, including women who are younger than 18 or impoverished. To preserve this right throughout her life and support the right to be childless.

3. To make explicit that the fight for reproductive rights must include birth control; the right for poor women and lesbians to have children; partner adoption for gay couples; subsidized fertility treatments for all women who choose them; and freedom from sterilization abuse. Furthermore, to support the idea that sex can be—and usually is—for pleasure, not procreation.

4. To bring down the double standard in sex and sexual health, and foster male responsibility and assertiveness in the following areas: achieving freedom from STDs; m ore fairly dividing the burden of family planning as well as responsibilities such as child care; and eliminating violence against women.

5. To tap into and raise awareness of our revolutionary history, and the fact that almost all movements began as youth movements. To have access to our intellectual feminist legacy and women’s history; for the classics of radical feminism, womanism, women’s liberation, and all our roots to remain in print; and to have women’s history taught to men as well as women as a part of all curriculum.

6. To support and increase the visibility and power of lesbians and bisexual women in the feminist movement, in hish schools, colleges, and the workplace. To recognize that queer women have always been at the forefront of the feminist movement, and that there is nothing to be gained—and much to be lost—by downplaying their history, whether inadvertently or actively.

7. To practice “self in the community”: to see activism not as a choice between self and community, but as a link between them that provides universal ballence.

8. Equal access to healthcare.

9. For women who desire to participate in all reaches of the military, and to enjoy all the benefits offered to its members. The maintaining of the welfare system.

10. To liberate adolescents from slut-bashing, listless educators, sexual harassment, and bullying at school, as well as violence in all walks of life, and the silence that hangs over adolescents’ heads, often keeping them isolated, lonely, and indifferent to the world.

11. To make the workplace responsive to an individual’s wants, needs, and talents. This includes valuing stay-at-home parents, aiding employees who want to spend more time with family and continue to work, equalizing pay for jobs of comparable worth, enacting a minimum wage that would bring a full time worker with two children over the poverty line and providing employee benefits for freelance and part-time workers.

12. To acknowledge that, although feminists may have disparate values, we share the same goal of equality, and of supporting on another in our efforts to gain the power to make our own choices.

13. To pass the Equal Rights Amendment so that we can have a constitutional foundation of righteousness and equality upon which future women’s rights conventions will stand.

What do you think about this list? Does it accurately portray Third Wave Feminism?