Practically Between Post-Menopause and Post-Modern

Abstract

Hanging above my desk are a few postcards which undoubtedly formed the wallpaper of many feminist lesbian graduate students over the years: ‘we are everywhere’; ‘ be a bloody train driver’; and Rosie the riveter with defiant strong fist. As a collection they occasionally fan flames of motivation, but one in particular has begun to irritate me: ‘ I ’ ll be a post-feminist in post-patriarchy’. I must have purchased it before my encounters with ‘ post ’ modern theory, because initially I thought it had a certain utopian appeal. Now, the simplistic binary opposition is seductive in its political directness but the underpinning defiance of all things post-modern is disappointing in its dismissive tone. The postcard may also irritate me because, after years of exposure to the sunlight coming through my office window, it is beginning to fade. Symbolically, this becomes my irritation with feminism — that ‘it’ seems to forever belong to a baby-boomer few who fought at its vanguard and, having earned the right to pass on wisdom, have become its only spokeswomen; that while students, and those on the ‘ Queer omnibus’, may support equal pay, women ’ s right to divorce and child-care initiatives, they would wince at being labelled with the ‘F-word’. While feminism seems to belong to one generation, queer seems to belong to another: one respected but dated, the other cutting-edge and cool.