Muhammad knows the first three waves of feminism: firstly, the political strife for female voting (Let’s say 1880-1920), secondly, the revival of the struggle for sexual and financial freedom inspired by the movement of civil rights (around 1965- 1980) and, thirdly, the revival of the hell of the 1980s. The Third Wave includes a number of candidates for the expansion of white women’s color fight, a new openness towards gay rights, an increase in the theory of the queer, re-evaluation of women’s choices (but certainly not in a backward-looking way), gender-positive feminism, or the expansion of academic women’s studies into other gender-defined groups.
It is now evident, though one that combines components of earlier motion, that we are in another moment. We’re in a “fourth wave,” according to Wikipedia, connected to the return of open feminist activity in 2012. However, I would want to muddy the waters by claiming that since Y2K we have actually seen two distinct waves of feminism and are extremely different from one another. The two are mediated more or less by the internet, the fourth by blogs and chat rooms, and the fifth by social networks. It was built on both shared and extremely personal impassioned enthusiasm. The other strands of feminism, in particular, academics, which we’re keen to prove women weren’t crazy but were actually very much learned and professional had maintained up to this type of excitement (usually for venous romantic genres or silly realities). It reversed Gen X’s inclination for the cynical approach to culture and harmonized it with the atmosphere of creative cooperation that would become thousands of years ago (with a bit of faux-infantile absurdism).
The fourth wave provided teens and young women with new confidence, encouraging them to believe their voices are important and that the networks of individuals like them understand one other. At the same time, the relationship with celebrities was a direct and likely harmful over-identification, which blurred the lines of reality and entertainment as reality TV, which Trump’s political career would do by extension. The fourth wave’s objective was to achieve a more inclusive folkloric culture, with less dramatic topics like access to abortion and the need to encourage more women to vote.