Fourth Wave Feminism

https://www.britannica.com/topic/feminism/The-second-wave-of-feminism

• Debated by some, many claim that a fourth wave of feminism began about 2012, with a focus on sexual harassment, body shaming and rape culture among other issues. 

• The Me Too movement was significant, which launched in 2006 in the United States to assist survivors of sexual violence, especially females of colour. The campaign gained widespread attention beginning in 2017, after it was revealed that film mogul Harvey Weinstein had for years sexually harassed and assaulted women in the industry with impunity. 

• 'Maybe the fourth wave is online,' said feminist Jessica Valenti in 2009, and that's come to be one of the major ideas of fourth wave feminism. 

• Online is where activists meet and plan their activism and it's where feminist discourse and debate takes place. 

• Sometimes fourth-wave activism can even take place on the internet (the MeToo tweets), and sometimes it takes place on the streets (The Women's March), but it's conceived and propagated online. 

• The trending hashtag 'YesAllWomen' after the UC Santa Barbara shooting was a fourth-wave campaign.

• So was the trending hashtag 'StandWithWendy' when Wendy Davis filibustered a Texas abortion law.

• Arguably, the SlutWalks that began in 2011 - in protest of the idea that the way to prevent rape is for women to 'stop dressing like sluts' are fourth wave campaigns.

• Like all of feminism, the fourth wave is not a monolith it means different things to different people. 

• Fourth wave feminism is queer, sex-positive, trans-inclusive, body positive and digitally driven. 

• Now the fourth wave has begun to hold our culture's most powerful men accountable for their behaviour. It has begun a radical critique of the systems of power that allow predators to target women with impunity. 

• Currently, the fourth-wavers are driving the movement behind MeToo and Time's Up, but in previous years they were responsible for the cultural impact of projects like Emma Sulkowicz's Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight), in which a rape victim at Columbia University committed to carrying their mattress around campus until the University expelled their rapist.