After my research about Cardi B and feminism, I was surprised to what a degree it found a positive progression of the message about the movement. While the roots of the can be found in ancient Greece, dignity, intelligence, and basic human potential of the female sex was identified as important, it is not hard to believe that it did not have any kind of traction until the end of the 19th century in America.
Power and agency were, until that point, mainly derived from physical strength, the enlightenment made nods to this being a toxic balance of power, but even then the authority of intellect was squashed by the hegemony of male authority and might-is-right. The first organization effort was in 1848 at the Seneca Falls Convention 1848 and the first wave centered around abolition and the temperance movement. For the first time, at the 1848 Convention for Women’s Rights, the idea that “all men and women were created equal” and deserve the same rights were codified in the Declaration of Sentiments at the event. While fighting for abolition, women learned the skills to fight for their own rights. The National Woman’s League collected 400,000 signatures in 1864 to end slavery. I believe this was the point that it became apparent to women that if they wanted any kind of social justice, they must work for suffrage. After all, a war had to be fought in order for abolition to happen.
This combination of abolition and feminism is what I find so interesting and wanted to get it into my final paper but only touched on it by the construct of the jezebel and the whore. I didn’t pick up on the cohesion of the movements until it was too late. This direct intersectionality of the movements should have propelled Black women into equality as well, but something stopped it.
It took 54 more years to win suffrage. During this time the movement redefined what it was to define what it was to be a woman in the culture. Not surprisingly it took another civil rights movement and another war for the second wave of feminism to rise. In other words, woman were losing their children, and their power needed to be heard. The equal rights amendment was signed and therefore gave the power to have their own agency when it came to their rights alongside BIPOC. It is quite unbelievable that it took another 14 years for a woman to have her own bank account!
In this stage, it was important for the movement to teach the entire population that their sexuality didn’t belong to men. Once again Black oppression was helpful to invigorate the movement, but not in the positive light it was during the 19thcentury. The power was derived in the competition for the audience, therefore they got better at trying to control their message. The second wave of feminism didn’t fail, women are growing in corporate power, abortion rights were established, and generally, their ideals are transitioning into norms. The problem is that the strength of the cooperation with the Black rights split during the conservative backlash in the ’80s that actively attacked what feminism is. This backlash separated the movements because the attack was coming for both factions at the same time. I don’t know if the intent was to divide and conquer, but that was the effect. This split could be clearly seen after the 2016 Women’s march, which primarily was a social movement against the 2016 election of Trump. The division between the intersectionality of the movements put them at odds with each other just as the movement was starting to be monolithic. Factions were created, and a 2017 march never happened.
This separation of the movements is probably why Cardi B’s sexuality is seen, culturally, as something different than just like a powerfully sexual woman like Christina Aguilera or Britney Spears. After all, their videos were sexually explicit but were not called out for ruining the fabric of society. This is somewhat surprising target audience was much younger than Cardi B’s.
The good news is that this dynamic is changing fast. The clear segmentation of the audience is showing how mass popularity is shifting cultural norms. At least in my research, this paradigm shift caused by social media will change things for the better at an exponential rate.
The fourth wave of feminism, which is just now being established is bringing back the ideals of equal rights that started 173 years ago. This movement is all-inclusive, including all forms of men, women, LGBTQ, all races’ creeds, and proclivities. The progressive message is being fought with buy-in from many more segments of the population. The “We” definition in, “We shall overcome,” is much larger, and puts a smile on my face.
https://www.pacificu.edu/magazine/four-waves-feminism
https://www.nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture/antislavery-connection.htm