Prudence Chamberlain (Auth.) - The Feminist Fourth Wave - Affective Temporality-Palgrave Macmillan (2017)

The Feminist Fourth Wave
Prudence Chamberlain
The Feminist Fourth

Wave
Affective Temporality
Prudence Chamberlain
Royal Holloway, University of London
London, United Kingdom
ISBN 978-3-319-53681-1 ISBN 978-3-319-53682-8 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53682-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017937305
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Acknowledgements
Aspects of this book have been presented at various conferences, where

discussion helped me to develop my thinking on affect and understand-
ing of the wave narrative. ‘Feminism in the Academy’ hosted at RHUL
allowed me to have a dialogue with Ika Willis on negativity and the
power of ‘no’, while Radical Negativity at Goldsmiths similarly forced
me to focus on bad affect as well as the feelings of solidarity associated
with feminist groups. Finally, Queen Mary’s Feminism: Influence:
Inheritance Symposium served as a stimulating forum for discussing
irony and contemporary activism.
A number of the ideas included in the book have been developed in
and through previously published work. ‘Critical Waves: Exploring
Identity, Discourse and Praxis in Western Feminism’, co-written with
Elizabeth Evans, was published in Social Movement Studies: New
Feminisms in Europe. ‘Inheriting Irony and the Development of
Flippancy’ was included in Feminism, Influence, Inheritance: New Essays
in English Studies and most recently ‘Affective Temporality: Towards a
Fourth Wave’ in Gender and Education: If Not Now, When? Feminism in
Contemporary Activist, Social and Educational Contexts. These articles all
had rigorous and helpful reviewers who challenged, developed and
encouraged my thinking on affect, temporality and feminism.
I began this book while working at Royal Holloway with a number of
supportive colleagues. Both Robert Hampson and Robert Eaglestone
v
vi Acknowledgements
discussed the original proposal with me, offering incredibly useful advice
on the process. Kristen Kreider was a brilliant PhD supervisor, as well as
a supportive colleague, selflessly reading drafts of every piece of work.
Without her support, affective temporalities would not have come into
being. ‘Generative Constraints’ has also been a useful group to discuss
identity politics and temporality, and so my thanks go to Nisha
Ramayya, Diana Damien, Kate Potts and Nik Wakefield. Working
and writing with Elizabeth Evans has consolidated my appreciation of
the wave narrative and hugely informed my understanding of contem-
porary feminist activism. Discussions and emails with Kristin Aune have
also offered great insight into contemporary activism, especially in rela-
tion to online spaces and younger generations. Eley Williams has been
an unwavering friend and stoic editor, as well as inspirationally articulate
in her politics. Thank you also, to Spela, for saying that surely affect and
feminism had been done in the 1980s.
Thanks to my family for their support; my father for all of his links
and ongoing interest in feminism; my sister for discussing politics with
me, always offering the alternate voice over a glass of wine; and my
mother for her continual and patient draft-reading, and brilliant argu-
mentative mind. Primarily though, I would like to thank them for their
interest, and humour when mine is lost. Finally, thanks to my wife, Kim
Bussey, who knows where the coffee is and when to cut me off.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 The Wave Narrative 21
3 What is feminist time keeping? 45
4 Affective Temporalities 73
5 Why Fourth Wave Now? 107
6 Feminist Futurities 155
Conclusion 185
Bibliography 197
Index 199
vii
1
Introduction
Recent feminist scholarship, journalism and activism have recognised

that feminism has reached a fourth-wave iteration (Aune and Dean
2015; Evans 2015; Cochrane 2014; Munro 2013; Baumgardner 2011;
Wrye 2009). While some assertions of this fourth wave originated from
the USA, the term has strong traction within the UK, having been
championed from as early as 2013. This book, as a whole, considers
this fourth wave moment, while addressing the problematic of using a
wave narrative. Recognising criticism of the wave, I will place the
narrative in dialogue with affect, in order to explore the concept of an
‘affective temporality’. While the wave has been critiqued for limiting
feminism, its usage persists. This is not to say that the problems regard-
ing the wave narrative have been resolved, but that it nonetheless has a
number of productive possibilities. As such, it is necessary for feminists
to find a way to work with the narrative that allows for a greater
flexibility of approach. The wave can be a means by which to approach
feminist temporality, considering how the past and future inform the
affective immediacy of the present moment.
Kira Cochrane, a journalist for The Guardian, published All The
Rebel Women: The Rise of the Fourth Wave in 2013. Her book explores
© The Author(s) 2017 1

P. Chamberlain, The Feminist Fourth Wave,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53682-8_1
2 The Feminist Fourth Wave
the emergence of a fourth wave, discussing why such a surge in activism

is occurring at this moment. The work divides into four areas that
Cochrane perceives as central to the fourth wave: rape culture, online
feminism, humour, and intersectionality and inclusion. In her discus-
sion of the fourth wave rising, Cochrane focuses on a number of UK-
specific activists, detailing the personal experiences that drove them to
feminism, as well as their more public contributions to the social
movement as a whole. She mentions Jinan Younis, who was galvanised
in her feminism through experiences of street harassment; Lucy-Anne
Holmes, who despaired of the sexist coverage of female athletes during
the Olympics, and started a ‘No More Page 3’ campaign; Nimko Ali,
who underwent FGM at the age of seven and set up Daughters of Eve
to campaign against the practice while offering physical and psycholo-
gical support to women involved in the process. Cochrane proceeds to
list a number of other important feminists, including Caroline Criado-
Perez, Laura Bates and Soraya Chemaly, as well as organisations such as
Feminista, Reclaim the Night, and Rape Crisis South London. What
is useful here is Cochrane’s UK specificity, in addition to her focus
on individuals and single campaigns. While she is not offering these
women as figureheads for the fourth wave, Cochrane uses them as
examples that represent the progression of the surge in activism and
interest. The activisms that Cochrane details speak to my understand-
ing of the affective intensity that is constituting the fourth wave of
feminism.
In her chapter ‘Why Now?’, Cochrane traces the history of each
wave, considering its activism, main objectives, central achievements
and pivotal participants. In turning to the fourth wave, she considers
the way in which moments can emerge where women step back from
their culture, and with a keen eye, suddenly perceive its failures. The
movement to step back in order to examine cultural and social
contexts, however, must be catalysed by something: a sudden rushing
awareness that forces an even wider taking stock. Cochrane attributes
this moment to increasing worry about body image, with self-harm
and anorexia on the rise simultaneous to the shrinking and down-
sizing of models. She considers this in conjunction with the economic
crash, compounded by the coalition government coming to power in
1 Introduction 3
2010. The movements against austerity actually contributed and

fed into a new wave of feminism, creating a culture of protest and
resistance that seemed to have diminished in previous years. The
politicisation of the nation, only amplified by the MP expenses
scandal and savage cuts to public services, added energy to the start
of the feminist wave.
The history of feminism has demonstrated scepticism ‘toward the
popular, where popular genres . . . have often been positioned as coun-
ter to feminist politics and feminist subjects’ (McBean 2015: 15). In
spite of this, the fourth wave seemed to gain initial acknowledgment
and credence from journalism. Rather than this recognition being
counter to feminist politics and subjects, it seems as if those reporting
from the ‘midst’ of activism needed to find a name for what they
identified as a surge in activity. The term has since been used by a
number of media outlets, including the Huffington Post, The Telegraph,
the L.A. Times, and New York Times. The term has also emerged within
academia, with day symposiums being hosted at Leicester and UCL,
amongst others. In this case, the popular usage of the term does not
run counter to feminism’s employment of it. Instead, it demonstrates
how widespread the surge of activism is. The fact that the fourth wave
has not been purely identified by academics, but is being used by
activists, and journalists commenting on the unfolding action, is
indicative that the surge has penetrated multiple disciplinary manifes-
tations of feminism.
It is also possible that contemporary developments in technology
might have played a key role in catalysing the fourth wave of feminism.
As such, it is ‘imperative that academics consider the effects that new
technologies are having on debates and activism’ (Munro 2013). In her
article, ‘Feminism: A Fourth Wave?’, Ealasaid Munro’s primary claim
for the fourth wave is that it has been enabled by the Internet, particu-
larly social media facilitating call-out culture. Social media has allowed
for the continual challenging of sexism and misogyny, creating an
environment in which feminism can directly engage with that which it
is against. Not only are the numbers of women online increasing, but
also multiple feminist campaigns have been launched on the Internet,
including Everyday Sexism and No More Page 3. However, Munro does
acknowledge that in spite of increased online presence, women are still

woefully under-represented in Western democracies, taking up a small
percentage of seats in the coalition government’s cabinet. Another
characteristic that Munro attributes to the fourth wave is intersection-
ality. She discusses privilege checking and the introduction of new
specialised vocabularies (including terms such as cis, WoC and TERF)
1
as an attempt towards a more open feminism. However, intersection-
ality has been discussed within feminism since the 1980s (Evans 2015).
While intersectionality could be considered a key methodology of the
third wave of feminism, it would seem that the openness of feminism is a
process that must continue and progress, both within and without the
wave narrative. By this I mean that each new wave might not herald a
period of increased intersectionality, but rather that feminism is becom-
ing more intersectional as time passes. As society at large becomes more
aware of inequalities, especially around those of class, sexuality and race,
feminism too adapts to incorporate and support these further margin-
alised or overlooked identities. Munro seems to concur, writing that this
fourth incarnation of feminism is especially concerned with giving voice
to those who occupy the margins of the movement.
In a recent special edition of Social Movement Studies, editors Kristin
Aune and Jonathan Dean addressed the seeming resurgence of feminism
within the UK and Europe. They write that ‘while the term fourth wave
has yet to gain the level of prominence achieved by the third wave, its
emergence is testament to the enduring attraction of wave-based meta-
phors in feminist practice’ (2015: 381). Having acknowledged the
endurance of the wave narrative, Aune and Dean do not attempt to
specify or describe the fourth wave. Like Cochrane and Munro, they
extrapolate some key characteristics, such as humour and online acti-
vism. However, these do not create a full survey or complete identity for
this wave incarnation. In doing so, the two writers acknowledge the
contemporary while simultaneously recognising the impossibility of
1
Cisgender is a term used to describe people who identify as the gender or sex in which they were
born. WoC is used to apply to women of colour and often used in discussions of intersectional
failure and representation. TERFs relates to trans-exclusionary radical feminists, and is used by
both trans-activists and the feminists who identify as trans-exclusionary.
1 Introduction 5
offering a comprehensive overview. As a moment of activism unfolds,

elements of it can be identified, but a sense of the complete picture
cannot be drawn until after the event. In avoiding the definitive, Aune
and Dean ensure that writing about the wave does not stifle its devel-
opment; indeed, it is for the movement of activism to determine
progression and development. The relationship between feminism,
activism, and scholarship has long been established as both a produc-
tive (Simic 2010) and fractious dialogue (Boetcher Joeres 2000; Stacey
2000; Wiegman 2002; Currie and Kazi 1987). Both activism and
academia inform one another, but can nonetheless cause disagreements
about what constitutes feminist action. The hesitation, then, to clearly
outline the nature of the fourth wave seems to speak to an academic
reluctance to hinder any natural growth or development. Rather than
attempting an interpellation, in which the extensive naming of the
fourth wave fixes its nature in place, the uncertainty of this feminist
moment allows for the activism to develop more organically. The
concept that the wave might shape itself outside of the strictures of
more formalised definition speaks to my focus on affect, which is
highly contingent and adaptable, working in the spaces between the
personal and the political.
Structures of Feminism
The wave narrative is a contentious one, attracting criticism while still
maintaining prevalence. The difficulties that arise around the wave
narrative are directly related to feminist discourse, more specifically,
the structures on which the social movement relies in order to tell stories.
Narratives are focussed in such a way that they are not always able to
encompass all voices (Springer 2002), and particularly with the wave, the
chronological ordering means whole time periods are lost or glossed over
(Laughlin et al. 2010). Stories can also make heroines of specific acti-
vists, while overlooking the ongoing grassroots efforts of others
(Laughlin et al. 2010). It is perhaps, then, that the wave’s limitations
are inevitable where the structures of organising used for feminism allow
for such omissions to exist. These structures become especially rigid in

their ordering of feminism when they are positioned as narratives of
failure and success (Hemmings 2011). However we choose to tell the
story of feminism dictates how the social movement is understood: it
might be one of brave, individual women; it might be a story of progress,
or a tale of losing identity as the times change; it could be divided into
lit-up moments of intense action, or focussed on overlooked moments in
history. My choice to tell the story of fourth-wave feminism through the
wave narrative is for the most part dictated by the narrative’s resilience.
In spite of continued criticism of the oceanic metaphor, the wave is still
being used to describe this perceived fourth iteration of increased fem-
inist activism. Furthermore, I believe that the surging and forcefulness
connoted by the wave speaks to periods of affective intensity, prompting
increased action, within feminism.
The feminist reliance on narratives betrays a need to delineate and
differentiate. Even if there is a refusal of the numerical or chronological,
distinctions emerge elsewhere with qualifiers such as queer or trans-
positive preceding ‘feminism’. This is also applicable to black feminism,
where this strain is seen as a necessary rejoinder to the established
whiteness of the social movement (hooks 2014; Lorde 2013).
Similarly, some activists might subscribe to or identify as radical femin-
ists, which is positioned as very separate to liberal feminism (Tong
2014).
It would seem, then, that criticism of the waves as ultimately divisive
is actually applicable to all of feminism. It is a strength of the politics,
I would suggest, that there is so much multiplicity and difference
contained within. It ensures that feminism continues to progress towards
total inclusivity and better representation of the women who subscribe
to its tenets. To consider the ‘wave narrative’ as one of the most
problematic terms of feminism is to overlook that the movement as a
whole has always proliferated with different terms, alternative identities,
grassroots movements and subsections.
It is possible for the wave’s ubiquity to be read as a form of dom-
inance; one which seems counter to feminist politics of progress, resis-
tance and subversion. As Kathleen A. Laughlin writes, the wave ‘remains
the dominant conceptual framework for analysing and explaining the
1 Introduction 7
genesis of movements for women’s rights’ (2010: 76). It is perhaps that

the wave seems to establish itself as a master narrative that makes it
difficult to adapt to and work with. That all of feminism might be
understood in relation to moments of intense activism, more often than
not selected and defined by the media, seems to undermine the ongoing
efforts of continually working activists. However, the wave’s ubiquity
makes it almost impossible to dismiss in relation to Western feminism.
It might be most useful then, as Nancy Hewitt suggests, ‘to recast the
concept of waves itself in order to recognise multiple and conflicting
elements that comprise particular periods of activism’ (2012: 659).
Rather than questioning the usage of the waves, it might be more useful
to consider why they are used and how their meaning can be shifted such
that they are not seen as representative of feminism’s whole history
(Evans and Chamberlain 2015). Indeed, a wave is a phenomenon that
happens amongst a much wider ocean, influenced and fuelled by a
number of different factors. The waves, then, are not the sum total of
feminism’s action within the past two centuries, but rather, ascribed to
moments that seem particularly inflamed and intense.
Aune and Dean ask, ‘does a new wave appear to wash away every-
thing that went before? And does talk about feminist mothers and
daughters ease other kinds of relationships between women and pro-
duce a heteronormative model of the reproduction of knowledge?’
(2015: 379). This suggests two things: the first is that waves do not
efface feminist history. When a new wave is declared, or emerges, it
does not eradicate previous efforts of previous waves. In fact, it is purely
adding a particular surge to an ongoing fight for equality. As such,
waves should not be seen in conflict with one another, especially if they
occupy similar timeframes, or overlap in any way. The second is that
the wave might actually be more productive than any familial narratives
that are used to describe different generations of feminist thought and
activism. The mother and daughter model, initially used for the second
and third waves, speaks to a sense of hierarchy and rebellion, creating a
feeling of the new replacing the old. Similarly, it overlooks the fact that
feminism has critiqued heteronormative models of existence on account
of their support of the subordination of women (Rich 1995). To try to
organise the politics neatly into a family narrative, then, is to overlook
the difficulty that comes with performing roles such as ‘mother’ and
‘daughter’ within a wider society. Aune and Dean go on to suggest that
a wave can be understood ‘as a set of discourses that have different
meanings and take on different effects in different contexts’ (2015:
397). What I want to emphasise here is the contingency that runs
throughout Dean and Aune’s definition. As opposed to conflating the
wave with a particular generation, or attributing it to the inevitability of
progress, surges are formulated through a range of interdependencies.
The wave is a moment in which discourse, effect, context, and affect all
converge, creating an adaptable and evolving energised period of con-
certed activism.
In accepting the emergence of the fourth-wave moment, it is useful
to consider that ‘there are important differences between historical
specificity and generational specificity’ (Kaeh Garrison 2000: 144–45).
Generational specificity implies that waves emerge when a younger
group of women come to the politics, looking to shape a social move-
ment that is more accommodating of, and tailored to, their identity.
However, this is not to be confused with historical specificity, which
speaks far more to my understanding of affective temporality. Historical
specificity would suggest that feminism as a social movement must adapt
as times change. It is not so much that younger women are forcing a
total innovation of the movement, but that progress itself requires
feminism to take new shape. For example, within this specific moment
we can see incredible use of online fora, including Facebook and
Twitter, to communicate, campaign and organise. This movement is
not shifting feminism into the terrain of the young, 1990s-born women
who have grown up with such technological advancements. Instead,
social media is providing a platform to a wide range of women, who
are able to use the connectivity and immediacy to promote feminism, as
well as consolidate their engagement within this wave. Certain technol-
ogies and activisms, then, should not be attributed to generations, but
rather to points within chronological time in which methodological
innovation is inevitable.
Affect resonates with this understanding of time, complementing the
concept of moments as opposed to generations. Much like the familial
lineage suggested by a mother and daughter model, the generational
1 Introduction 9
understanding of waves forces a consideration of specific types of iden-

tity. It also suggests that the politics is not actually adaptable to the
movement of history, requiring younger generations to explode previous
expectation, and innovate completely, ready to start afresh within the
demands of their own generation. As our current usage of social media
might suggest, technological advancements, as well as ongoing changes
within a political context, create certain forms of engagement that are
more common than others. In turn, these forms of engagement create
certain kinds of feeling: the speed allowed by technology ensures that
there is a sense of responsiveness, immediacy, rapidity and a culture in
which it is possible to have dialogue or express disaffection. My focus on
affect, feeling, and emotion within this book is an attempt to recognise
the way that the personal and political still inform the movement of
feminism. Furthermore, it allows me to move away from divisive under-
standings of the wave narrative, instead suggesting that particularly
notable surges might be related to an increase in feeling, or an especially
intensive affective period. In rejecting waves as generational difference,
or the new replacing the old, affect allows for a narrative in which each
new incarnation contributes an energised period of action to an ongoing
feminist ocean.
As my chapter on affect explores, feeling and emotion are central to
social movements. Although feminism, and women, have a difficult
history of ‘over-feeling’ or ‘hysteria’, it is important to acknowledge
that everyday sexism and endemic misogyny will ultimately have feeling
repercussions. In some ways, those feelings will be entirely emotional,
but in other senses they have true and embodied ramifications. Abortion
legislation in Ireland, for example, leads to movement over to the UK
where procedures are legal. While the legislation might be upsetting for
women, the impact on their bodies, and the needs for their bodies to
move, locates the political difficulty within embodied experience. Affect,
then, becomes important in that it seems to mediate the thinking and
feeling emotional side, and then the embodied experiences of such
feeling. It situates itself somewhere between the physical experience,
and then the more internalised emotional responses inevitable in the
face of a patriarchal society. Furthermore, affect itself is subject to
change. Primarily operating as movement, spreading between bodies
and encouraging personal experience to become a form of outwardly

expressed feeling, affect is shaped by a series of contingencies. Much in
the same way that Aune and Dean formulate waves, affect is determined
by people, by outside influences, wider social contexts, developing
technology, and then individual events that stimulate mass, feeling
response. It is affect’s very contingency that makes it especially appro-
priate to the waves of feminism, matching the continually changing
surge of intensity, and then disappearing when the strength can no
longer be sustained. My aim in this book is to position the wave as a
phenomenon that by no means can be easily understood and described.
It is, however, a temporality in which activists cohere to create a
particularly forceful wave of feminism.
The Fourth Wave

Ultimately, this book will consider the affective temporality in relation
to the British fourth wave of feminism, which I argue is currently
underway. As I have stated, my objective is not to specify what consti-
tutes fourth wave, nor to offer set definitions or types of activists, which
can be used for crude characterisation. Instead, I hope that my investiga-
tion of the fourth wave’s emergent affects within the UK will suggest a
methodology that can be applied to an understanding of waves as
affective temporalities. My purpose in doing so is to develop an
approach to the wave narrative that is not identity or generation pre-
dicated, focussing on exceptional surges of energy as opposed to division.
Addressing the possibility for a queering of temporality within the
feminist movement, I will consider how the waves almost operate as
moments of intensity, which map back onto an understanding of the
‘contemporary’ as outlined by Giorgio Agamben. However, I also want
to acknowledge that documenting and analysing such moments as they
unfold is incredibly difficult. How is it possible to offer an overview
when one’s position is located within? Furthermore, as the fourth wave
of feminism unfolds in the contingencies of this contemporary, it will be
subject to change. There are certain methods and activisms being used
1 Introduction 11
currently that might be significantly altered by the creation of a new

social media site. Similarly, the Conservative government’s economic
policy has informed this newest wave of feminism, and might yet go on
to pass more legislation that further influences this moment (Cochrane
2014; Evans 2015; Karamessini and Rubery 2014). My emphasis on
contingency and adaptability, then, is not purely because it is relevant to
the formulation of the waves, but because it speaks to how I will be
addressing this fourth-wave moment. Aune and Dean write that the
fourth wave is ‘less clear cut than third-wave feminism’ but captures ‘the
specifics of new forms of activism that have emerged since mid-2000s in
the context of economic crisis and increasingly polarized gender debate’
(2015: 381). Even in the writing on fourth wave, while it might be
possible to recognise some of the contextual factors for its formation, it is
difficult to explain its precise identity.
Jennifer Baumgardner, an American feminist who co-wrote the
1990s’ ManifestA, has addressed the fourth wave in her newest book
F’em! Goo Goo, Gaga and Some Thoughts on Balls. She writes that ‘I
believe that the Fourth Wave exists because it says that it exists. I believe
the Fourth Wave matters, because I remember how sure I was that my
generation mattered’ (Baumgardner 2011: 251). While Baumgardner
recognises that the declaration of the fourth wave is enough to establish
it as a new wave within feminism, her second statement undermines this
surge. In writing that the fourth wave matters purely on account of a
new generation needing to be recognised in some way, Baumgardner
makes the wave divisive once more, but also related – in part – to a
narcissistic desire to be seen. As I have argued before, the waves do not
happen purely because a younger generation of activists decide that they
need to distinguish themselves from their precursors. In fact, in an
interview with Baumgardner, Debbie Stoller, the cofounder and editor
in chief of Bust, states that she has not noticed a fourth wave. She goes so
far to say that the technological platforms, including social media, have
just allowed younger feminists to disseminate the same information in
new ways. She also suggests that there is an almost-return to some of the
thinking of second wave, with a greater emphasis on identity politics
that were dismantled within the third wave (Baumgardner 2011: 72).
Both Stoller and Baumgardner, then, seem to be doing a disservice to the
idea of the fourth wave. Stoller’s belief that the fourth wave is not
underway, purely because it has not innovated feminism, overlooks the
fact that the politics have been defined by continuity. In spite of an
emphasis on wave division, feminism has been uniform in its aim of
creating a society in which women and men are treated equally. While
this aim might manifest differently within different contexts, depending
on the discourses and technology at work, it is still central to the social
movement. The fourth wave is not a narcissistic declaration, nor is it a
simple repetition of previous waves. Rather, it is the acknowledgement
of an affectively intense period of feminist activism.
In spite of Stoller and Baumgardner’s different understanding of the
fourth wave, it is nonetheless difficult to define. It cannot be attributed to
a younger generation’s needs for differentiation, in the same way that it
cannot be dismissed on account of its continuity with the history of
feminism as a whole. That said, while situated within the midst of an
affective temporality, it is challenging to attempt to characterise the wave.
As such my methodology is concerned with exploring specific fourth-wave
campaigns, with each one offering different insight into the affective
formulations of this contemporary. I understand the fourth wave as
defined by its activists, but independent of their identities. By this, I
mean that the fourth wave’s affects, in addition to being shaped by the
social, political and economic context, is also informed by the feminists
working within it. That does not mean that these individual activists need
to be positioned as figureheads of the wave, or spokespeople for all of
feminism. Instead, it is that their work is significantly contributing to, or
augmenting, the affects that are emerging within the fourth wave. The
campaigns and use of technology inevitably alter and impact upon pre-
vailing affects, adding good feelings of solidarity, proactivity and change,
into what might otherwise be an unsettling and upsetting environment.
Methodology
The methodology for this book is to look at five specific case studies
that represent aspects of the fourth wave affective temporality. While
each example is not exhaustive in its links to the multiple affects
1 Introduction 13
constituting this contemporary, they illuminate ways in which feeling

is moving from the personal to the political, and in turn, mobilising
activists in a coherent and collective feminist surge. Furthermore, the
examples demonstrate how affective surges can create a ‘sticky’ form of
social movements, in which feeling and activists become attached or
adhered. My aim is not too offer a full survey of the fourth wave. This
is partly on account of the fact that the fourth wave still seems to be
in a nascent period, and therefore cannot be wholly understood.
Similarly, my aim to establish an affective temporality requires that
this work, as a whole, entertains the uncertainty suggested by the term.
As my chapter on affect explains, private and public feeling, extimacy,
and intimacy, forces and passages are all in a state of ‘becoming’. As
such, waves and affect are both liminal spaces, in which the movement
from one state to another is constituted through the surge in action.
The uncertainty of the liminal, in conjunction with its responsiveness
and contingency, means that it is difficult to define with total precision
within the moment of activism. In addition to this, I argue that
feminist temporalities are also formed through a set of contingencies,
in which past, present and future touch one another within the
moment of contemporary activism. It is these uncertainties, of both
affect and temporality, that have drawn me to individual case studies;
all of which reveal an aspect of the fourth wave’s unique relationship
with time, as well as the types of feelings by which it has been
produced, and is continuing to produce.
In order to establish the fourth wave of feminism within the UK,
I will not be looking to interview subjects or activists working within this
moment. While the third wave as a term has been in circulation since the
1990s (Evans 2015), allowing for more expansive and in-depth discus-
sion of its temporality, the fourth wave has only very recently entered
public discourse (Aune and Dean 2015; Cochrane 2014; Evans 2015;
Munro 2013). As a result, outside of the few examples of its usages, it is
difficult to trace the origins of fourth wave, which organisations are
using it as a term, and how many activists affiliate themselves with this
iteration of the narrative. Alternatively, then, this book will think
through the ways that the fourth wave is producing and responding to
specific affects. In doing so, I will suggest a methodology of uncertainty
and immersion for reading the affects of waves. In order to do so, I have
looked to queer theory, in addition to that of feminism, drawing on
Heather Love and Ann Cvetkovich’s writing on ACT UP to think how
the period of intense AIDS activism might in some way map onto
feminist waves. While ACT UP is pivotal to understanding the history
and lineage of LGBT protest with the USA, it is not a standalone
moment: rather, it was a tidal wave amongst years of past and future
campaigning. Both Cvetkovich and Love testify that it is almost impos-
sible to document the contemporary of activism as it unfolds, a senti-
ment reflected by Rosi Braidotti and Judith Butler in their discussion
‘Feminism by Any Other Name’ (1997). There, both theorists discuss
the need for academic feminism to respond to the immediate demands
of the present, even if such response necessitates indeterminacy and
uncertainty. There is a certain obscurity that occurs within the moment
of action, so that while campaigns and their objectives might be clearly
outlined, the mutable and evolving scene will be locked in a process of
becoming. In this state of becoming, feminism is not indecisive, but
uncertain, shaping itself through immediacy and responsiveness in light
of long-term aims.
In order to address the becoming of this fourth wave, as well as
wishing to establish an affective understanding of the contemporary,
I will study five particular fourth-wave happenings. Each event, incident
of activism, or campaign will suggest a series of affects specific to this
wave. I am not suggesting that these affects will remain the same, or even
that the campaigns will last for the duration of the fourth wave, but that
they are vital for this nascent period. Thus, I will be demonstrating how
the early years of UK fourth-wave feminism have been created through
an intensity of multiple feelings, all of which have created an affective
environment conducive to sustained activism. Initially, I will address
the Slut Walk, to consider how very small, localised incidents now have
the possibility of becoming worldwide protests within a number of
weeks. Although the Slut Walk began in Canada in 2011, a version of
the march was being organised in the UK within months, demonstrating
the very close links between British, American and Canadian feminism.
While there are inevitably some differences, the fact that all three
have mirrored one another in their wave progression demonstrates a
1 Introduction 15
trans-Atlantic similarity. I will also think about The Slut Walk in relation
to signifiers, discussing the way that slut can be exploded through a widely
divergent group of marchers. Next, I will look to Everyday Sexism, a
Twitter account that was set up in 2012 in order to document women’s
everyday experiences of misogyny. Everyday Sexism will allow me to think
about how archival practices are changing to meet the demands of our
current technology, as well as addressing the problem of ongoing sexism.
The archive has become a form of online activism, using its social media
forum to document and disseminate thousands of women’s experience
of sexism in the hope that wider society will no longer overlook these
incidents. This demonstrates the relationship between the personal and
the political within an age of advancements of rapid communication and
social media.
In a similar vein, I will discuss the Facebook Rape Campaign, which
went viral in 2013, in relation to the power of capital. Activists had
noticed that Facebook was hosting content that promoted and cele-
brated violence against women. There were groups wholly dedicated to
posting non-consensual pictures of women, making jokes about domes-
tic violence, and championing rape as something that women deserved.
When Facebook were unwilling to remove the pages, the activists
involved in the campaign decided that they needed more leverage, and
turned to brands who used Facebook in order to advertise their services.
As brands began to withdraw their business from the social media site,
Facebook was compelled to act. This specific campaign raises questions
around feminism and capital within a neoliberal context. To what extent
must feminism be complicit with corporations, and how much does
such a complicity speak to a postfeminist anxiety that the social move-
ment will become a manipulative tool of industry? I will explore how
lobbying groups pressuring brands to withdraw their advertising from
Facebook effected change. While activists’ reliance on corporations for
difference might be dissatisfying, consumers can use their buying power
as leverage against sexism and misogyny. Continuing with online cul-
ture, I will read ‘trolling’ against Susan Faludi’s concept of the backlash.
Up until this point, my consideration of Internet feminism will have
been primarily positive, emphasising quick mobilisation and far-reach-
ing campaigns. However, social media has also facilitated an early-onset
backlash, which seems to be unfolding simultaneous to this wave of

feminism. Such a concurrence means that the feminist wave is being
informed and fuelled by misogyny, at the same time that feminism is
fuelling misogyny. Trolling relates specifically to Internet practices, and
is used to describe a person or people who relentlessly hassle another
person online. While this can be harmless, when it comes to feminism, a
number of cases are related directly to threats of sexual violence and
physical harm.2 Instead of working as a safe space, the Internet allows for
anonymity, which makes detractors and trolls especially violent and
unkind. I will be thinking about this and the idea of a concurrent
backlash in relation to the campaign to install a female face on the £5
note. Headed by Caroline Criado-Perez, the campaign is not just nota-
ble for its success, but also what its existence revealed about a culture of
threat and sexual violence online.
Finally, I will turn back to linguistic strategies, drawing on some
ideas of vocabulary suggested by the Slut Walk, and aspects of post-
feminism gestured to through the Facebook Rape Campaign. In 2015,
Bahar Mustafa was accused of using the hashtag ‘#killallwhitemen’.
Working as Goldsmith’s Diversity Officer, Mustafa had previously
come under fire (a case that was reported in national UK papers) for
encouraging queer, non-male, people of colour to attend a university
event on diversity. She was accused of being reverse-racist and exclu-
sionary towards straight, white, men on campus. It is no surprise,
then, that when she was accused of using the hashtag, she was reported
to the university, as well as discussed on a national level. I will explore
the unprecedented response to Mustafa’s ironic utterance, and think
about how the intersection of certain identities can lead to the wilful
misinterpretation of activism. Mustafa’s case is twofold in that it
highlights that the fourth wave of feminism is still a safer space for
white feminists than for women of colour. Furthermore, however, it
2
I explore this issue in my chapter on the fourth wave of feminism specifically, but a number of
activists working within this moment have been forced to leave their houses after threats on their
well-being, including Laurie Penny and Caroline Criado-Perez. Otherwise, it is commonplace for
feminists to receive rape and threats of violence online in response to their campaigning and
activism.
1 Introduction 17
demonstrates how the once useful rhetoric of feminism has been

co-opted by those looking to critique and undermine the social move-
ment. That a diversity officer and feminist can be accused of exclu-
sionary practices and reverse-sexism speaks to the fact that tools of the
social movement are now being used to undermine the need for
feminist-only spaces. This speaks very strongly to the UK’s feminist
students, who have often been accused of no-platforming and shutting
down debate when they have refused to host bigoted speakers on
campus. I will look at the difficulties of this in navigating free speech
while ensuring that feminism is still able to make use of strategies such
as irony and no-platforming, without being accused of exclusion and
bigotry.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this book aims to take up the wave narrative in order to
defend its usefulness within this fourth-wave moment of British femin-
ism. The focus on timekeeping will shift emphasis from discontinuity
onto the way in which the past and future inform the present moment of
feminist activism. Similarly, my consideration of affect is a means by
which to avoid wave definitions that focus on identity, praxis or gen-
eration, all of which can be used in order to make strong distinctions
between each wave, as opposed to focussing on their similarities. In
focussing on British feminism exclusively, I do recognise the influence
that America and Canada have on this contemporary moment.
Technology has ensured that fast dialogue across great distances is
incredible easy, and so it is possible for communication and co-organis-
ing to exist across the Atlantic. Furthermore, North America has experi-
enced a similar relationship with wave progression as the UK, with
numerically delineated waves starting from the first to the third having
been declared. As such, while I focus on specifically UK case studies in
order to think through uniquely British contexts for this affective
temporality, there are online and critical influences from the USA
evident in much of the activism I discuss.
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2
The Wave Narrative
With the emergence of fourth-wave feminism being addressed in the media

and academia, arguments surrounding the narrative have been reignited
(Aune and Dean 2015; Evans 2015; Munro 2013). Debate surrounding
the waves has centred on the narrative’s use in general, specifically focussing
on the second and third incarnations. Chronologically distant from the
first, the two more recent waves occurred in quick succession, where the
numerical delineators seemed to create division between generations of
practicing feminists (Bailey 1997; Baumgardner and Richards 2000;
Purvis 2004). While the ‘first wave’ seemed to span an expansive period
of activism in the UK and USA, perceived as ending when women achieved
the vote, the third wave was heralded only decades after the second wave
had begun (Bailey 1997). It is this proximity that foregrounded debates
around the wave narrative, raising a range of problems for the way in which
the narrative creates divisions and exclusions. Through the introduction of
a fourth wave, I hope to change the frame of the wave narrative debates. As
opposed to pitting two forms of feminism, ‘second’ and ‘third’ against one
another, the fourth allows for a revision of the almost dialectical nature to
the Western history of feminism.
In this specific fourth-wave moment, feminists who identify as second
and third wave are still participating in, and driving, activism.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53682-8_2
Unsurprisingly, then, they might perceive the declaration of a new wave as

unnecessary; feminist action has not ceased since the wave with which they
were first affiliated. The fourth wave, however, does not signify yet another
break between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’, but simply adds its number to a series
of precedents. In order to consider this addition productively, it is necessary
to think about the wave as a temporality, as opposed to a specific generation
or identity. This focus ensures that ‘older’ or ‘previous’ feminists are not
excluded, or made to feel as if their time is up. It allows for the possibility
that surging waves are the result of unique socio-political contexts and the
affects they produce. With this in mind, this chapter will tease out the
implications of the co-existence of multi-generational feminisms, all oper-
ating within the fourth-wave moment. Looking to criticism on the wave
narrative, I will explore the central reasons for divisions between the second,
third and fourth waves. Given that criticism of the wave has not deterred
the heralding of a fourth wave, it becomes increasingly necessary to address
the narrative, finding ways in which it can be reclaimed beyond its negative
associations. The numerical approach to waves does not have to signal a
total separation from precedents, just as the exclusionary practices of the
waves can be revisited and, to a certain extent, corrected. Instead, it is
possible that a fruitful dialogue can emerge while feminists who have
participated within second-, third- and fourth-wave movements are still
working. Each temporality, while suggesting social change, is not calling for
a total reinvention of feminism, just acknowledging that this incarnation
must respond slightly differently to an altered context.
In attempting to avoid these rifts and divisions, it is important to
consider why the wave narrative is being invoked now, in spite of its
problematic history. The ‘wave’ has been widely understood as relating
to the ocean, a fact that is made particularly evident through titling and
wordplays commonplace within articles and books relating to the narra-
tive.1 This oceanic metaphor has both positives and negatives in relation
1
Works such as ‘Is It Time to Jump Ship? Historians Rethink the Waves Metaphor’ (Laughlin et
al. 2010), ‘Charting the Currents of the Third Wave’ (Orr 1997), ‘Surfing Feminism’s Online
Wave: The Internet and the Future of Feminism’ (Schulte 2011) rethink how the wave narrative
might express our relationship with activism and the wave motif. Theorists such as Nancy Hewitt
have questioned how the wave can relate to radios or frequencies (2012), while Cobble has
to the cohesiveness of feminism. While it seems to gesture to a much

wider body of water, which offers a sense of consistency, the general
understanding of waves is that they crash after one another. This has led
to both generational and chronological separation, in which the newest
wave is understood as replacing, or in some cases, obliterating, the wave
that precedes it (Baumgardner and Richards 2000; McRobbie 2009). In
attempts to remedy the divineness that seems inherent in sea waves, the
narrative has been reconceived in a number of ways, such as related to
the radio (Laughlin et al. 2010; Hewitt 2012), or even waving in
greeting (Laughlin et al. 2010). Both interpretations allow for greater
flexibility, without the same kind of linear delineations that are used to
divide the watery narrative. However, in spite of her resistance to the
narrative, Dorothy Sue Cobble addresses its potential complexity when
she writes that ‘the homogenous univocal wave does not exist in
nature . . . Up close, the ocean is full of cross-current and eddies’
(2010: 8). It is possible, then, that the wave can represent greater
multiplicity than that with which it has been attributed. Through
recognising the difficulty of cross-currents and eddies, as well as oceanic
complexity, the homogeneity of waves can be rejected in favour of a
productive approach to feminist temporality. There is a compelling case
to be made, then, for the fact that waves are not predictable, uniform or
monolithic. They are, in fact, capable of multiplicity and diversity, all
facilitated through the movements of feminist affects.
Using the Wave: A Case Study

Before exploring wave usage, the history of the narrative, and then ways
it can be reconceptualised, I want to focus on a specific case study.
Rebecca Walker’s ‘Becoming Third Wave’, published in Ms. Magazine
in 1992, was a moment of self-definition that heralded the beginnings of
positioned it as a waving in greeting or parting (2010). These examples go some way to

demonstrate the wave’s flexibility: it can engage with oceanic metaphors, or it can be translated
into quite different contexts.
a new feminist wave. The declaration of a new wave did not signal a
break from, or criticism of, second-wave feminism. In fact, Walker
suggests that it was simply a necessary response to her socio-political
and cultural context. The piece as a whole speaks to my concept of the
affective temporality, to be explored later within this book, in that it is
concerned with specific events, the historical moment and self-determi-
nation. Before Baumgardner and Richard’s Manifesta was published in
2000, third wave was considered a term used by women of colour. In
‘Becoming the Third Wave’, Walker discusses a series of events and
affects, all of which are bound up with her as a woman of colour, before
finally declaring a new wave for feminism. Instead of making her
identification oppositional, she claims that it is necessary to draw on
her mother’s energy. She writes, ‘I am ready to decide, as my mother
decided before me, to devote much of my energy to the history, health,
and healing of women’ (1992).2 Importantly, Walker is expressing
similarities with her mother, demonstrating the continuity of feminist
efforts over generations. In spite of a third-wave moment being recog-
nised, the feminist energies do not differ from that of a previous gen-
eration; they are just being harnessed for another surge of action.
‘Becoming Third Wave’ has a particular focus on very specific
incidents and events. Walker’s article does not espouse a form of
feminism other than direct action, nor does she attempt to define the
third wave. In fact, aside from announcing the wave’s existence,
Walker’s article does not address chronology, methodology, activism
or identity. Instead, she meditates on a number of experiences that
have led to the development of her anger, and as a result, action. The
first incident comprises a conversation with her male lover over the
abuse accusations levelled at Clarence Thomas. When Thomas was
nominated for supreme court, he came under scrutiny for having
sexually harrassed a co-worker named Anita Hill. This led to a widely
publicised case against Thomas, which gained huge media attention
2
In Walker’s later works, she distances herself from her mother in both a political and personal
sense. Baby Love (2008) discusses choosing to have children and to prioritise maternity above what
she understands as a feminist preoccupation with being in the work place. Black, White & Jewish:
Autobiography of a Shifting Self (2001) also examines emotional distance from Walker’s mother.
and interest.3 Walker’s partner is immediately concerned with the

impact such a case will have on civil rights; in essence, a sexual
harassment suit is not good for black men who are potentially being
promoted to positions of power. Walker in response asks that ‘pro-
gressive black men prioritize my rights’ (1992), demonstrating the way
in which her black and female identity start to split from one another
in this case. Here, what is overwhelming is the fact that racial politics
and feminism are not able to intersect with one another, in spite of a
strong history of black feminism (Collins 2000; Lorde 2013; Mirza
1997; Springer 2002), which ultimately prevents Walker and her
partner from entering into a productive dialogue with one another.
Finally, in frustration, Walker asks, ‘are you going to help them try to
destroy me?’ (1992). The rage that Walker expresses is neither hyper-
bolic nor misplaced, as her lover makes her feel, but a response to the
affective moment in which women’s rights were positioned as wholly
secondary to the rights of men.
Later in the manifesto, Walker discusses sitting on the train behind a
young girl and mother just as a group of young men begin to discuss
their sexual exploits. Walker writes that she can see the child folding in
on herself, suddenly become withdrawn and reserved. When another
man joins the group, they begin to proposition Walker, at which point
she decides to move into a different carriage. Having left a space which,
to her, constituted a threat to her safety, she is so angry that she describes
the experience as ‘out of body, just shy of being pure force’ (1992). Her
concern here is with force, which later becomes a more positively
channelled ‘energy’. Walker is almost moved out of her body, and out
of an introspective engagement with the world. What begins as personal
3
In 1991, Clarence Thomas was nominated to succeed a retiring judge on the Supreme Court.
After his nomination was announced, a previous co-worker, Anita Hill, accused Thomas of having
sexually harassed her at work. Hill had not gone public with her accusations, but was forced to
when a tape of her discussion with the FBI were leaked to the press. Hill was then required to
publicly testify against Thomas, as her admissions brought his clean character and honesty into
question, things which would ultimately damage his nomination. Thomas was found not guilty,
and used the trail as a means by which to accuse white America of attempting to sabotage a black
man who had ascended beyond expectation. A number of books have been written on the topic,
including Speaking Truth to Power (1998) by Hill, while Thomas addressed the case in his memoir
My Grandfather’s Son (2008).
experience becomes a disembodied force, moving from the internal to

the external, forcing an affective engagement with the context. It is not
purely that she felt physically threatened on a train, or that she saw a
young girl learn to take up less space while men assert themselves, or
even that her lover was not able to understand a feminist reading of an
important political moment. Rather, it is the coinciding and colliding of
these experiences that make up her affective moment, one that is
described as ‘third wave’. The wave is not constituted through a specific
form of activism, nor at this point does it have a well-defined character,
it is purely a force and an energy born of an affective engagement with a
world in which feminism is still necessary.
I would also like to focus briefly on the title of the piece: ‘Becoming
the Third Wave’. Whether the title was chosen by Walker herself, or
ascribed by Ms. Magazine, it is significant in that it denotes a process, an
almost-there that is not yet realised or consolidated. In The Words of
Selves: Identification, Solidarity, Irony Denise Riley writes that ‘my awk-
ward navigations to become, coupled with my constitutional failure to
fully be, are what actually enable political thinking and language’ (2000:
5). Riley acknowledges that ‘becoming’ itself is a process of navigation,
which Walker enacts in her writing when she moves from a politically
charged legal case, to a conversation with a lover, to the public space of
the train. Each area allows for a different consideration of feminism and
gender, such that she is navigating experience and affect as opposed to
offering up a fully constituted sense of having ‘become’. The process of
‘becoming’ is to exist in a state of in-between-ness, which might account
for Walker’s lack of specificity in terms of how the third wave should be
defined. The ‘becoming’ also requires energy and force to fuel its con-
tinuation. Of course, this can be post-rationalised such that a wave seems
to take on far more certainty than its ‘in-between-ness’ and affective
energy actually allows. However, it is important in the moments of
uncertainty that becoming is perceived not as constituting a failure of
commitment, but as a space for political thinking. In accepting that this
process is an inevitable part of political development, feminism resists
fixity and opens the possibility for a multiple type of politics: one that is
able to evolve in relation to changing affectivity.
Understanding the Waves

Following Walker’s assertion of the links between specific affective
environments, and the emergence of a new wave, I want to consider
why this narrative has been specifically useful for feminism. While I will
not be returning to the previous three waves to discuss how each one has
been formulated, I will consider the multiple possibilities of the symbol
in relation to political activism and social movement.
In its noun form, the ‘wave’ can be used to denote a disturbance of a
surface, a surging or progressing movement, or even, widespread feeling
(Oxford English Dictionary 2017). In addition to reflecting the move-
ment of water, wave also relates to disturbances and feeling, both of
which are vital to my understanding of affective temporalities.
Disturbance seems to imply that the waves must break through the
calmness maintained by a surface, bringing to the fore the undercurrents
that might otherwise go unseen. It is the necessary breaking of the status
quo, disrupting placidity in order to create movement and progress.
Widespread feeling is highly relevant to this concept of disturbance; it
creates affective ties amongst and between feminist groups. As I will
explore in my chapter on affect, this sense of widespread feeling is
particularly necessary as the social movement is no longer predicated
on essentialist identities or uniformity of experience. Both feeling and
disruption create the sense of surging and energy, suggested by each new
iteration of the wave.
In its verb form, the wave is to go back and forth, curve alternatively,
or quite simply, to be moved (Oxford English Dictionary 2017). The
focus is on the fact that a wave can offer an alternative to the norm; it is a
curve away from the straight and narrow, and an alternative to norma-
tive practices. It is another assertion of movement, an oscillation and
crashing, focussing on mobility. ‘To be moved’ is especially significant: it
is without start and ending point, but focussing instead on the action
itself. It also acknowledges that waves do not just mobilize themselves,
but might be moved by external factors. As such, they are responsive, in
addition to consolidated through internal affects. This seems particularly
pertinent for both feminists and feminism, where the former might be
moved to the latter through experience, and the latter inflamed to the
point of a mass surge by specific social conditions. If waves do not begin
with total clarity, from a traceable starting point, then they also do not
end clearly, concluding neatly with a series of achieved objectives.
Instead, they are a carrying of force from one moment to another,
drawing energy to sustain the movement until the wave breaks.
This focus on energy demonstrates that the wave itself might be
reconceived as a kind of surging. While the wave narrative can be
understood as denoting difference, as well as signifying chronological
landmarks in the progression of feminism, it might instead be more
appropriate to approach it as a form of energy that takes shape within a
specific moment. Through drawing on the concept of oceanic analogies,
the wave can speak to the way in which feeling and affective momentum
are sustained through historical, social and cultural contexts. Through
considering surging and affects, both of which are difficult to define
precisely, the wave takes on new possibility. It is no longer considered as
having emerged at a specific point, or abated at a specific time, but
rather, is considered as a feeling moment appropriate to its context. As
Baumgardner writes, ‘if you think too hard about the criteria for each
label, the integrity of the waves disintegrates rapidly and they eddy into
one another’ (2011: 243). This statement seems to be both in favour of,
and against, the narrative, an interesting stance given that
Baumgardner’s co-written 1990s’ text Manifesta was almost entirely
concerned with the declaration of a third wave. What she seems to
suggest here, is that definition does not necessarily help to contain or
explain the waves. Rather, in delineating very clear identities and criteria
for each wave, they start to collapse into one another. This is not to say
that difference is lost, but rather, that such intensity of focus overlooks
the uniqueness of each wave in favour of categorization and rigidity. If
the waves actually become identity labels, firmly shored up through a set
of characteristics, their intensity and affective possibilities are lost.
Consequently, we should take a more relaxed approach to the under-
standing of the waves, appreciating their continuity and diversity, as
opposed to focussing on the differences entailed through numbers.
The emphasis on energy, and less oceanic waves, might be why critics
such as Hewitt favour the concept of a radio wave. Critiquing the
traditional understanding of the wave as oceanic, Hewitt claims that

such simplicity cannot ‘fully capture these multiple and overlapping
moments, chronologies, issues and sites’ (2012: 1), a claim that seems
antithetical to the way in which Cobble suggests potential complexity
for the narrative. The problem that Hewitt identifies with the chron-
ological wave, is that the numerical progression implies that each new
incarnation is better equipped, more socially progressive and ideologi-
cally sophisticated than its predecessor (Hewitt 2012). Criticism of the
wave and historical revisionism has demonstrated the ways in which
certain ‘concepts’, such as intersectionality, have existed long before they
are named as specific to a third wave.4 There is also evidence that types
of feminism considered to have terminated on account of their ‘out
datedness’, continue long after their death is proclaimed.5 Radio waves
negate these problems, prioritising communication, and the ability for
feminists to ‘tune in’ depending on their own interests and investments.
Most importantly, perhaps, is that radio waves can co-exist with one
another, undermining the danger of a hegemonic or exclusive central
representation of feminism. The linearity of the oceanic wave, with the
first followed by the second, followed by a third and so on, prevents the
space for productive cross-wave dialogue. Similarly, the generational
model supports the idea that one wave is entirely replaced by another;
the younger and newer iterations are formed in reaction against their
precursors. However, as I shall argue in my following chapter, it is
4
Intersectionality was first coined by Kimberle Crenshaw (1991) and was a term used to describe
the need for a multifaceted feminism that focused on intersecting oppressions as opposed to just
gender. Often associated with the difficulty of racial representation within feminism, ‘intersec-
tionality’ is not purely a third wave concept, even if it rose to prominence as a term then. Thinkers
such as Audre Lorde and bell hooks had been exploring ideas of a more representative feminism
well in advance of the dates suggested for the third wave, while books such as The Bridge Called My
Back: Writings by Radical Women of Colour were published as early as 1981. Other critical works,
including Hewitt and Thompson’s Multiracial Feminism: Recasting the Chronology of Second Wave
Feminism (2008), have challenged the way we understand intersectional politics in relation to a
feminist timeline.
5
I explore this concept further in my chapter on feminist temporalities. There, I consider forms of
current activism that relate to pornography, a feminist preoccupation that was seen to end within
the second-wave moment. I also consider Radical Feminism, similarly associated with the second
wave, and the fact that it has continued throughout the history of feminism, and as such, is not
tethered to a specific time period.
possible that the waves can be understood in a chronological sense, while

refuting both linearity and generational limitations. That the waves seem
to follow one another in an order does not preclude a crossing of
temporalities. One wave does not obliterate the other, and waves do
not neatly end, with a coherent finishing point that inevitably leads to a
renewed surge of activism years later. Rather than an obliteration of the
past with each numerical progression, the waves, when considered in
relation to an affective temporality, can actually offer cohesion and an
element of simultaneity.
Usefully, those in favour of the wave do not necessarily see the
oceanic metaphor as one that signifies division; in fact, it can be
understood as both discontinuous and continuous (Henry 2004: 24).
Waves are part of a wider ocean and all interact in slightly different
ways with the shore against which they crash. Waves also work in
succession and are continual, even if the tide pattern is subject to
change. However, the numerical delineation of the waves does imply
that there is some kind of discontinuity; that a new wave has emerged,
intent upon improving on its predecessor. The most recent wave is
seen as having succeeded the last, a succession that can actually be
positioned as a form of continuation even while its difference is
recognised (Bailey 1997; Aune and Redfern 2010; Whelehan 1995).
The differences are not always internal, or unique to the feminists
heralding a new age, but social, economic and political. New incarna-
tions of feminism are demanded by the affective environments in
which they gain their specific energy. As I have stated, this does not
mean a total severance from previous waves, but recognising the fact
that the affects of a particularly moment create a unique kind of
energy. Thus, the suggestion that a wave is part of a larger body is
important. The metaphor does not indicate that activism emerges
suddenly and without context, but that a surge is possible from within
a much wider body of feminist work, both historically and in a
contemporary sense. This relation to a wider context is important in
recognising that the waves, in spite of their numerical delineations, are
actually in a stronger conversation with one another than a linear
interpretation may allow. A body of water resists a linear understand-
ing of time, even if its waves move in chronological order. The
counting of the waves does not need to denote a rejection of past

practices, but rather, can be born of an ongoing engagement with
precursors, as well as a potential future.
Whether watery or more related to a technology with which we can
tune in and out, waves are involved in the transmission of energy.
Beyond this idea of transmission, furthermore, is the importance of
energy in sustaining the motion or movement. It is this understanding
of the wave that enables the consideration of multiple affects converging
within a unique temporality. Instead of associating the wave with divi-
sion, or the identity of a generation, it can be concerned with transmis-
sion and sustainability. Both are required in order for social movements
to start, gain momentum, and finally, dissipate when the affects are no
longer able to hold the subjects together in a coherent manner. The
analysis of affect, in relation to the surges of activism that constitute a
wave, recognises that they are composed of a range of feelings, not all of
which emerges from a few media-chosen feminist figures. Instead, affect
can form on the margins, or can infect from disparate places that are
suddenly activated within the same temporality. This also allows for
feminism to create its own internal affective environment. By this I
mean that the waves do not necessarily represent a sameness or uni-
formity of approach to feminism, nor are they composed of the same
‘identity’ of activist. In fact, feminist waves can also take an affective
charge from negativity, from disagreements amongst activists, and from
marginalised voices within the feminist movement expressing their
invisibility. This internal dialogue and affective charge is central to the
way in which the politics can draw on multiple, and sometimes contra-
dictory energies, in order to create a force that transmits outwards.
Criticism of the Wave Narrative

In spite of the wave’s potential usefulness, it has experienced a significant
amount of criticism. Addressing the limitations of the narrative is
necessary in order to begin a project of reclamation, in which the wave
is associated with moments, surges and forms of public feeling. In The
Politics of Third Wave Feminism: Neoliberalism, Intersectionality, and the
State in Britain and the US, Elizabeth Evans offers a taxonomy for the
waves, writing that they are understood as: chronological, oppositional,
generational, conceptual and linked to specific forms of activism. These
categories of wave understanding are not mutually exclusive, indeed,
there are bound to be links between concepts and methodologies of
activism, in the same way that a generational focus might be read as
oppositional. What this taxonomy does present is the ways the wave has
been understood such that it has a problematic relationship with history
and feminist activists as a whole. In categorizing the wave narrative, or
understanding it within a framework of chronology, generations, con-
cepts and activism, there is a loss of mutability and openness.
The chronological and generational approaches to waves are often
conflated. They both seem to herald a new age for feminism in two
senses; the first is that a young group of activists are taking over the
struggle, and secondly, that feminism itself is experiencing some kind
of renovation to keep up with the times. This inevitably leads to the
sense that older activists are displaced by younger counterparts, who
see their forbearers as outdated and slightly irrelevant to the unique
pressures of a new time. This sense of generational difference has been
emphasised, and possibly exacerbated by the ‘mother/daughter’ meta-
phor that is used within feminism. While the familial language could
suggest that there are links between the two generations, as well as a
strong sense of intimate lineage, the relationship is far more proble-
matic. Mothers can seem determined to dictate their daughter’s acti-
vism, while the daughters work too hard to shake the influence of the
older generation (Henry 2004). Rather than an intimate inheritance of
method, objective and affect, then, mothers and daughters are forced
to navigate the ways in which their clearly delineated generational
belonging creates a difference. The previous generations can feel dis-
placed by the declaration of a new wave, and so energy is redirected
onto critiquing the new incarnations of feminist activism, as opposed
to contributing to them. Similarly, young or new feminists are fixated
upon differentiating themselves to the point of criticising previous
activism in favour of focusing on continuity. If waves are understood
as relating to a new dawn within feminism, or alternatively, the arrival
of a new and up-to-date group of activists, then there is immediately a
generational problem. It prioritises the actions of the young, implying

that to become old within the politics is to become irrelevant.
Inevitably, this hinders cross-generational dialogue
Methodologies are also used to understand wave differences, with
technological advances having an impact on the way activism and
politics are organised. It might not be the case that feminism fundamen-
tally changes with each wave incarnation, but that it needs to adapt its
practices in order to make best use of the capabilities of the time. For
example, the means of communication now are entirely different from
those of first-wave feminism. That does not radically alter the objectives
of feminism, but it does have implications for the way activists are
participating within the social movement. The Internet allows for
much faster communication, and as social media has become increas-
ingly ever present in people’s lives, meetings can be hosted online, and
events organised through a series of clicks. It is no surprise, then, that the
movement of the third wave is associated with increased technological
capacity (Garrison 2000; Kinser 2004), in the same way that I will argue
the fourth wave is facilitated by the use of networking sites. Where,
previously, feminist organization might have necessitated physical pre-
sence, it is now less important, with e-mail making the process of
communicating and connecting far less laborious. As technologies pro-
gress, feminist methods will change. This is testament to the adaptability
of the politics, in which activists will seek out the most efficacious ways
of communicating and organising. Feminists use whatever technology is
at their disposal – it is not indicative of wave identity. It also does not
render previous methodologies anachronistic or irrelevant, but allows for
them to evolve in line with the way that modes of dissemination have
changed.
It is perhaps the concept of ‘identity’ that is most problematic for the
feminist waves; it attributes each one with essentialist characteristics,
emphasising difference and causing division. To think of each wave as
having a specific kind of character perpetuates problems of exclusion and
leads to the historical silencing of those who are not deemed the right fit.
Classifying each wave as a specific identity associates each wave with a
type of woman, a certain form of activism, or aims that are then lost as
the moment passes. The second wave is widely understood as a time of
consciousness rising, with an emphasis on grassroots organisation and

sexual liberation (Rich 1995; Tong 2014). This allows, then, for the
third wave to define itself in opposition, identifying as intersectional,
aware of multiple oppressions, as well as associated with DIY punk and
zine culture (Evans 2015; Garrison 2000). The fourth wave, of which
there is less writing, has been understood as happening primarily online,
with social media cultivating a ‘call-out culture’ (Aune and Dean 2015;
Cochrane 2014). There is also an emphasis on trigger warnings and safe
spaces, resulting in criticism of the current wave as one of victim-
mentality and self-preservation (Ahmed 2016). These wave identities
negate the multiple ways feminism has been practiced, focussing instead
on a certain type of activism or woman. Each wave is in fact composed of
multiplicity; there are a range of different identities, activisms and issues.
Reducing feminist waves to a specific set of characteristics ensures that a
number of people become excluded. They might not align totally with
the normative identity associated with the wave, and as such, are absent
in its representation.
With this in mind, I want to think about the ways the declaration
of a numbered wave might be empowering. It is significant that both
the second and third waves have been self-identified as such; by this I
mean that each wave has been heralded by the declaration of its
existence. The second wave was first officially documented by Martha
Weinman Lear in her article ‘The Second Feminist Wave’ (Weinman
Lear 1968). While the term was clearly being used prior to the
article’s release, it does demonstrate that feminists and activists
were drawing on the term to describe the surge in action that they
perceived within their contemporary. This self-identification within a
nascent moment of the wave’s development demonstrates that it was
not post-rationalised or defined retrospectively. Instead, the second
wave term was deployed in relation to a series of aspirations for that
moment of activism, borne specifically of the unique cultural and
political constellation. Similarly, third-wave feminism was also self-
identified, as opposed to impose on a group of feminists retrospec-
tively (Walker 1992; Baumgardner and Richards 2000). In self-
declaring, the second and third waves are essentially stating their
necessity within a political and cultural climate.
In contrast, the first wave title was applied long after the surge of
activism had passed, and as such, could not be queried or rejected. The
benefit of this, of course, is that the chronological distance between the
first and second wave means there have been few issues of inheritance, or
daughter rebellions. This suggests that it is the act of self-identification,
in close chronological proximity, which establishes the problematic
relationship between the second and third waves. It could be said that
the declaration of the latter recognises that the former has failed (Roiphe
1994). Up until this point, the chronological proximity of second and
third have meant that the two waves are engaged in a dialogue purely
with one another, defining themselves, as a result, through dissimilarity
and continuity. Through introducing a further voice to the conversation
surrounding the updating of the wave narrative, this opposition is some-
what undermined. It is important to my work on the fourth wave, that
the numerical signifier within the narrative is declared within the
moment of activism. This is to suggest that the self-identification of a
new wave happens within the blur of the present, which prevents strong
characteristics or methodologies from being easily recognisable. As such,
the welcoming of a new wave is not calculated, but rather, in response to
an affective force that can be ‘felt’ even if it cannot be described
comprehensively.
A further problem is that a limited understanding of waves establishes
figureheads who are understood as representative of the wave as a whole.
Whether this is the fault of the politics itself, or the way that the media
interprets the activism, certain women are propelled to the forefront in
ways that are not reflective of the diversity of that feminist moment
(Mirza 1997; Springer 2002). For the most part, these figureheads tend
to be heterosexual and white (Collins 2000). These qualities and their
continual presence, as well as celebration, tend to exclude the work of
the disabled, lesbian or queer, and black feminists, who are also operat-
ing within that moment (Fernandes 2010). The use of figureheads
inevitably irons out diversity and ensures that feminism is represented
in such a way that is palatable for a wider public. A number of these
figureheads are able to transcend American and British culture, with
names such as Gloria Steinham and Betty Friedan being understood as
just as vital in the UK as they were in the USA. These problematic
figureheads speak back to the difficulty of a wave being associated with a

‘specific identity’. In writing about waves, it is impossible to look for a
figure, or a characteristic, that is representative of the whole. In fact,
feminism itself cannot be reduced to a simplistic synecdoche. The wave
narrative can be reconceived in a way that is both complex and multiple,
working against the assumptions that are made in relation to its numer-
ical designators.
Both specific wave identities and figureheads have set up exclusionary
norms for feminist waves. This has continued through the ways the
waves have been documented and archived, with an emphasis placed on
highly literate, educated, white, straight women (Kinser 2004). As such,
each wave as it is popularly understood has a periphery that is badly
represented. The periphery is often inhabited by those who have not
been enshrined as the most representative of their unique temporality.
This is not to say that certain forms of activism and specific types of
feminists have not existed, but rather, that in our efforts to represent the
waves, we have overlooked diversity and complexity. It is the practice of
storytelling, in which some characters are effaced or erased (Hemmings
2011), and archiving, in which ephemera is forgotten or goes unrec-
orded (Withers 2015), that results in a wave understanding that is both
limited and superficial. Focussing on affect, however, recognises that
unfolding feminist waves are instinctive, feeling, and immediate, in ways
that disappear as they become memorialized or post-rationalised. The
immediacy of contemporary activism and the affects that emerge might
not just be generated by engagements with a patriarchal society, but
fractious relationships within feminism itself. Both the negative and
positive affects are necessary for maintaining a surge.
Furthermore, in response to the seemingly narrow focus of each wave
are a number of revisionist writings of temporalities. Academics and
activists return to the past in order to contest our predominant under-
standing. In that way, multiple links between each wave are emerging,
demonstrating that an ‘identity’ approach to waves is actually emphasis-
ing discontinuity as opposed to similarity. This temporal movement
allows waves to become more amorphous, albeit through retrospective
analysis. As such, the whitewashing and straightening out of feminist
waves, which seems to have become an inevitability of the way in which
the second and third waves have been documented, is both revised and
debated from a future position. It is not, then, necessarily that the wave
narrative is problematic in terms of inclusion and scope, but rather that
the way its stories are told need to be reworked. Hemmings suggests that
feminism needs to reconsider its attachment to narrative for this very
reason (2011). Reliance on narratives ensures that feminism overlooks
certain activisms and activists, as well as setting up divisions and diffi-
culties by pitting trajectories that do not quite match up against one
another. While Hemmings work is vital for considering the grammar of
feminist theory, the wave narrative’s continued pervasiveness suggests
that scholars must work with it in order to innovate our approaches to
storytelling. It is necessary for critical focus to be on a lack of definition;
activists can recognise that a new surge of energy is emerging and
developing, but not pin it to specific people, attitudes or activisms.
This openness ensures that centres and margins are less apparently
defined against one another, such that a multiplicity of narratives can
co-exist within the emergence of a new wave.
The Reconceptualisation of the Wave Narrative

This moves me, finally, to a reconceptualisation of the wave narrative. In
the next two chapters I will be considering temporality and affect
specifically, so here, I purely want to address the productive ways in
which the wave can be reconsidered. As I will elaborate later, there are no
definitive ways to approach feminist time. Similarly, the wave narrative
will continue to be understood in a range of ways, critiqued, and in some
cases, completely rejected. However, based on my discussion within this
chapter, I want to posit that the wave narrative can be productively
conceived of as an ‘affective temporality’, which allows for diversity,
multiplicity and uncertainty to emerge in the discussion of the nascent
fourth wave. Similar to Aune and Dean’s claim that waves are heavily
reliant on discourses and contexts, all of which are subject to continual
change (2015), I will be considering not only difference, but also the
contingency of perception in regard to wave understanding. The mean-
ings, effects and contexts are all determined by the critical lens and
objectives of the individual looking to understand the wave narrative.

Aune and Dean do not attempt to describe specifically the fourth wave,
nor do they outline precisely what constitutes discourse, meaning, effect
and context. This definition embraces the same sense of openness that I
am proposing with the ‘affective temporality’, in that while numerical
delineations may foreground difference, the wave as a whole is simply an
intense affective response to specific social contexts. As explored within
this chapter, it might not be the failure of the wave narrative, so much as
the way we tell the stories of the waves, that results in erasure and
exclusion. While it has been argued that feminist activists and academics
should not draw on the wave narrative purely because it dominates
scholarship and historical understanding, there is a certain utility and
necessity for addressing it (Evans and Chamberlain 2015). Whether
positioning oneself against or for the narrative, it is continually invoked,
thereby creating a central idea around which other concepts of feminist
time-keeping orientate themselves. As such, I want to work directly with
the wave narrative to recast it as open, diverse and inclusive, with specific
properties that speak to feminism’s continuation throughout the past
century.
In spite of the numbered designations, the continuation of the wave
does imply that there is a recognised continuity. By virtue of using the
‘wave’ itself, each new iteration is demonstrating its reliance on prece-
dents. Instead of affixing herself to a third-wave signifier, Walker could
have attempted to coin an entirely new narrative. Instead, she chose to
describe her mobilisation within a pre-established oceanic framework.
Walker could also have turned to a symbol more reflective of her own
time, one with less reliance on nature and greater resonance with an
advancing technological age. However, the wave does suggest solidarity,
that each one heralds a new surge of energy towards final objectives.
When considered most simplistically, feminist aims have not diverged
widely since the suffrage moment: equality for women. This aim has
undoubtedly manifested in multiple ways, depending on not only the
focus of the political subject, but also the most pressing issues of that
political moment. The continued use of the wave, thus, recognises the
way in which women’s rights still remain at the centre of feminism,
although those are subject to change over time. It also suggests that a
new wave is not entirely dissimilar to its predecessor. What does make it
distinct is that it is harnessing a new energy related to a specific historical
moment, in order to continue the well-established feminist struggle.
The wave is also important as a narrative because it is reflective of the
spontaneous nature of activism. Feminism might unexpectedly gain
momentum, riding a specific convergence of affects for a sustainable
period of time. It is not necessarily predetermined; indeed, feminism
does not have a group of elders who decide when the next wave will
come. It emerges, sometimes slowly and in a very gradual sense, but in
others, rapidly and with real ferocity. This uncertainty and unpredict-
ability forces focus onto the energies and affects that constitute a wave. It
demands a more in-depth examination of the waves taking shape,
foregrounding the elusive or difficult-to-describe elements. As suggested
by the qualities for which a wave is critiqued, this uncertainty and
instability stands as an important counter. A spontaneous wave does
not emerge purely because a new generation of young women are
coming through, nor can it be instigated by one or two figureheads.
Similarly, the affects of a particular moment cannot be solely attributed
to methodologies, even if the latter does inform the way the former takes
shape. This indetermination undermines the concept that each wave can
be easily recognised as a specific identity. In fact, consolidated identity
itself becomes impossible, because the energy and affect will inevitably
change in their formations. The lack of predetermination is also impor-
tant in this sense, as it suggests that each wave does not take shape based
on the failings of the previous one. It also means that a wave cannot
define itself purely through oppositional objectives or reactionary acti-
visms. It undoes the idea that each new wave simply produces rebellious
daughters to their staid and out-dated mothers.
Most significantly perhaps, is that the wave narrative seems to be
inescapable. Even for those attempting to move away from its purchase
on cultural imagination, there is a certain reliance on the symbol. In fact,
it seems impossible to articulate a different position without invoking
the wave (Laughlin et al. 2010; McBean 2015). To reject it entirely
would be to overlook an important part of the way in which feminist
history has formed, whereas to revise or question its usage is inevitably to
dwell on the narrative. Thus, in the pursuit of non-wave-related feminist
temporalities, scholars often find themselves relying heavily on the

narrative in order to distinguish new ways of thinking. It is my conten-
tion, here, that returning and using a dominant narrative is not simply to
perpetuate it. The revision and reuse of the ‘wave’ is necessary for feminist
continuity as well as ensuring that a historical resonance remains in place.
The second wave and third wave were both self-identified and declared
within the nascent periods of that specific affective temporality. It is my
belief that the same type of declaration is necessary for the fourth wave.
However, the discussion of a fourth wave should not suddenly preclude a
whole range of activists who might be situated on the margins of con-
temporary feminism, nor should it be prescriptive in its forms of activism.
Rather, it is a recognition of the fact that new energies and affects are
emerging in relation to the contemporary.
It is necessary, then, to begin approaching the wave with an under-
standing that is more reflective of its possibility, as opposed to the way in
which it has been wielded or understood. Rather than opting for
certainty, pinning down identities and establishing exclusionary practice,
the wave can relate to indeterminacy, openness, affect and the contem-
porary moment. As I shall go on to explore within the next chapter, the
contemporary represents a range of possibilities for temporality; it sees
the present moment as a site of convergence, a haptic time. Through
rejecting the wave narrative as a signifier of certainty, whether genera-
tional, chronological, practice based or identity related, there is a space
in which multiplicity and uncertainty can thrive. This idea of the
‘multiple’ is necessary for enabling a range of voices and activists to
participate within the fourth-wave moment, rather than allowing it to
become colonised early through a few media-favoured figureheads.
Hewitt writes that ‘our best strategy then . . . may be to recast the
concept of the wave itself in order to recognize the multiple and con-
flicting elements that comprise particular periods of activism’ (659).
Through turning to affect within the wave narrative, this sense of
conflict can be maintained, without a need to clarify fully. Affect’s
characterisation as a force or a surge of energy speaks back onto the
way feminist waves take shape, but also that the contemporary moment
of activism is hard to define. A number of waves have become rigid
through the post-rationalisation of their development.
Conclusion
It is important to recognise that ‘feminism has changed substantially in
the late-capitalist and postmodern world but still references a longer
movement of history’ (Kaeh Garrison 2000: 144). It is this referentiality,
and the continual looking to the history, that allows for feminism to
develop a unique engagement with temporality. It also recognises the
way in which the wave narrative is useful for recognising differences
within the world, which is an inevitable part of chronological time
passing. As I have argued in this chapter, the advent of a new wave
does not have to denote a new generation, new methodologies or a
radically different form of feminism. In fact, it can purely be a recogni-
tion that as chronological time continues, feminism is able to adapt to
new demands arising as a result of societal changes. As such, then,
feminist waves can be understood as demarcating a particularly intensive
temporality, as opposed to relating to any kind of essentialist identity,
whether as a politics or in relation to its activists. With this considera-
tion, the wave is not prescriptive necessarily, nor a championing of a
specific kind of praxis; instead, it is open to the affect of its time and
ready to be shaped by the momentum of public feeling.
Through positioning waves as ‘moments’ rather than tethered to
specific women or types of activism, it is possible that someone initially
engaged within feminism during the second wave can still be active at
this point. The use of forth wave neither precludes nor excludes, but
simply denotes a surge of activism that arises out of specific affects both
within and without feminism. I see the updating of the wave narrative as
demonstrative of the intersection of a forceful surge of political engage-
ment with societal change that enhances the affect of the moment. Both
Baumgardner and Garrison champion the use of the wave narrative
because it recognises a change in historical context that, in turn, neces-
sitates a linguistic recognition within feminism. The wave comes to
represent a particularly forceful moment in which the altered activisms
and concerted feminist efforts are joined in a mass attempt at change. By
locating new waves within the desire for recognition by younger acti-
vists, Baumgardner’s flippant dismissal of the fourth wave as a
generation’s need to be visible (2011: 250), undercuts what I see as the

possibility inherent in conceptualizing surges of force. Actually, what the
wave can come to represent is an affective force crossing a temporality,
creating active collectivities that are moved by a shared feeling.
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3
What is feminist time keeping?
My previous chapter focuses on the wave narrative’s ongoing efficacy, in

spite of widespread criticism and rejection of it. In this chapter, I will
address how the wave narrative might best be considered in dialogue
with feminist timekeeping. As my previous chapter suggests, the wave
has a problematic relationship with time, arising primarily in response to
criticism of the narrative as limited and limiting. First, it is important to
reject the linear and generational aspects of the narrative, which encou-
rage a mother–daughter divisiveness. The numbered delineation of
different waves also reiterates this difficult inheritance. This creates a
feminism that emphasises inheritance and precursor irrelevance, which is
not true of a movement that cultivates a sense of continuity. Rather than
the wave’s relationship with time being wholly antagonistic, it is possible
that the two can work in conjunction with one another in order to create
a more fluid and amorphous use of the wave narrative. To think through
these possibilities, this chapter will look to queer theory on time, in
addition to feminist writing around temporality. Ultimately, I will map
the queering of time back onto the feminist wave narrative, but in the
meantime, want to recognise the ways in which different political move-
ments emphasise timekeeping practices. Rejecting linearity, both queer

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53682-8_3
timekeeping and feminist temporality require a different form of engage-

ment with time, one that looks backwards to history, while suggesting a
certain forwardness, all within the immediate moment of contemporary
activism. This creates a form of ‘haptic temporality’ or ‘touching times’,
in which feeling and affect can drive the surge of activism within the
present through being moved by both the past and future.
Feminists and Queer Theorists on Time

Both feminism and queer theory have addressed timekeeping as proble-
matic, recognising difficulties within temporality, archives and futures
(Cvetkovich 2003; Freeman 2010; Halberstam 2005; Love 2007). As
Sam McBean identifies in Feminism’s Queer Temporalities, however, it is
often queer theory that is attributed with a more radical approach to
time. She claims that such an attribution is actually the result of an
understanding that queer theory is borne of feminism, almost following
it in terms of a theoretical lineage. This creation of a timeline, rather
than allowing for a productive dialogue between the two disciplines,
makes it appear as if queer theory is a more radical rejoinder to a staid
and heteronormatively organised feminism. In fact, feminism and queer
theory can have a very useful critical dialogue (Schor and Weed 1997)
working in tandem with one another, sharing revisions of linear tempor-
ality in order to strengthen their respective politics. Not only is this
useful in terms of new approaches to timekeeping, it also serves as a
useful critique of the model of academic and activist timelines. In
attempting to ensure a linear organisation of social movements, different
forms of activism are separated out from one another. While this might
aid initial clarity, it is actually necessary to focus on the messiness of
overlaps, the potential regressions, and the visitations of the past on the
present. It is only through reading against a linear understanding of
waves, as well as queer activism, that feminism can sit within a produc-
tive dialogue with itself.
Queer theory has been influenced by a non-reproductive stance, and
so tends to avoid some of the pitfalls of feminism’s mother–daughter
narrative. Through rejecting a future that is entirely defined by having
children, and establishing normative family models, queer theory opens

up the possibility for alternative relationships with generations and time
(Edelman 2004). Similarly, queer engagement with the history of the
LGBT movement allows for a dislocated engagement with the passage of
time. One can think of the timekeeping of queerness as a form of ‘not
yet here’ (Esteban Munoz 2009), suggesting the need for optimism for a
future amongst the stagnancy of legislative progress that has not had
widespread cultural impact. Both the rejection of the traditional, cross-
generation familial model, as well as the emphasis on objectives that have
not yet been achieved, shifts queer theory into focusing on the future
within the present moment. This queering of temporality can also be
reflected in the way that the stories of queerness are told. Queer or non-
normative bodies can become consolidated in art, counterculture story
telling, or even mainstream films. This shifts the original subject into the
role of a ‘figure’, one whose real-time life and events are transformed
through the transcendence of becoming enshrined in art and culture
(Halberstam 2005). The ways in which queer figures are remembered
and re-told, in addition to the emphasis on difficult or non-normative
futures, allows for a reconfiguration of time with identity politics at its
centre. In spite of legislative process, it is still not possible for the LGBT
movement to settle comfortably into the logical and linear progression
of time.
It is this discomfort, even within a time of legislative progress, that
forces queer theory and LGBT people to look backwards. This sensation
of looking backwards, as opposed to focusing on the unfolding moment,
is a form of deviation; being deviant and deviating from the norm (Love
2007). History becomes increasingly important as queer activists move
into an age in which they are protected by legislation, having made
significant civil rights progress over the past few decades. By purely
focusing on the present and future, the past is negated, when in fact it
should be approached as ‘something living – as something dissonant,
beyond our control, and capable of touching us in the present’
(Love 2007: 9–10). This idea of a haptic temporality foregrounds the
affective ways in which the current moment of activism can be touched
by the past. It also suggests that the past, in spite of it having elapsed,
still has an impactful sense of aliveness and animation. It is perhaps for
these reasons that archival praxis has been considered as important to the
LGBT movement, as well as queer theory (Cvetkovich 2003). Queer
experience, particularly that which is personal and traumatic, is often left
undocumented. As such, it is necessary for archives to address the space
that lies between the person and public, as well as the affective intensity
that constitutes traumatic experience (Cvetkovich 2003). In considering
the past as alive, and touching our present moment, as well as consider-
ing how to make archives that imbue history with the feelings those time
produced, there is a strong movement towards making the past integral
to the present. It is necessary to deviate from the straight path of time in
order to turn, continually, to history. This requires a resistance to
‘chrononormativity’ (Freeman 2010), allowing for more mutable
approaches to the past and future, as well as a greater appreciation of
their ‘presence’ within the present moment.
These problems of past, future, and chrononormativity have also been
addressed within feminist writing. Feminism, too, is concerned with the
organisation of its politics as entirely linear (Grosz 2005). While social
movements are understood as clearly demarcated moments, all of which
contribute to a progression forwards, there is a limited approach to the
dialogue that exists between the past, present and future. In addition to
individual theorists who have critiqued a linear understanding of time,
the politics as a whole seems to resist this easy organisation. Admittedly,
this resistance is not entirely of feminist making, but borne of an
interaction between the politics and then its reception. Initially, I will
consider how postfeminism has queered a logical progression of feminist
waves. Postfeminism is understood as a form of ‘after feminism’; the
politics has taken hold, achieved its aims, and now can become a thing of
the past (Levy 2005; McRobbie 2009; Tasker and Negra 2007). Third-
wave feminism is often associated with postfeminism, to the point that
the two are conflated with one another. However, there are actually few
parallels between the two, with third-wave feminism declaring itself as
the new incarnation of a historically established movement, and post-
feminism claiming that such a declaration is unnecessary. Postfeminism
has been primarily understood as a belief that feminism has achieved all
of its long-term aims, resulting in total equality between men and
women (McRobbie 2009; Tasker and Negra 2007). Furthermore,
especially effective postfeminism assimilates feminist politics, making

references to them if only to heighten their current irrelevance (Levy
2005; Gill and Scharff 2011; McRobbie 2009). Feminism is acknowl-
edged, often with a knowing nod, such that misogyny and sexism can be
positioned as intentional or ironic. This serves a dual purpose of high-
lighting the way in which feminism is over; sexism is so firmly located in
the past that feminism can now be ironised. It is this combination of
knowingness and dismissal of feminism that constitutes a postfeminist
era. However, given that this idea of the ‘post’ politics is claimed to have
emerged within the same time frame as a ‘third wave’ it raises interesting
question for temporality. How can feminism and feminism’s heralded
end co-exist with one another? How can a defunct movement sit
comfortably alongside its rejuvenation? This idea of postfeminism,
then, suggests that the politics’ movement into popular culture troubles
the relationship with waves and temporality.
Similar complications are suggested by the concept of the ‘backlash’.
Originally conceived of by Susan Faludi in her 1991 Backlash, it signifies
how political feminist progress is not only met by resistance, but also by
regression. Dividing the book into a focus on popular culture, politics,
bodies, jobs and minds, Faludi demonstrates progress being rolled back
once a wave’s energies have ebbed. She writes that when feminism is at
its greatest or most noticeable in terms of strength, the opposition does
not passively accept changes. Rather, ‘its resistance creates countercur-
rents and treacherous undertows’ (1991: 15). Interestingly, Faludi’s
introduction gestures to two metaphors for feminist activism. She states
that the concept of ‘battle’ is perhaps useful for understanding the way
the politics is divided into a number of frontiers, issues which can be lost
or won. It also describes the combative nature of front-line activism, and
that feminism is not waging war against a passive culture, but an enemy
that is more than willing to fight back. However, Faludi also draws on
the ‘wave’ and elaborates to express the way in which she understands
women’s activism to work. Pivotally, for Faludi, there are times in which
feminist activism appears to be at a low ‘ebb’ in comparison with the
much stronger tide of cultural and political climates (1991: 15).
Through describing a dominant culture as a tide, to be combatted by
a larger tide of feminism, Faludi invokes the waves in a slightly different
context. It is her contention that all culture and activism work in waves,
whether it is the overriding tide of dominant and repressive politics, or
the irresistible surge of feminism. Such tides, which seem to offer
progress and regression, countering and fighting one another, ensure
that feminism is never able to establish a linear and clear movement.
Instead, aims and achievements, as well as smaller and less visible groups,
are washed away by a tide of dominant culture.1 However, as I shall
argue in my ‘fourth wave’ chapter, the relationship between feminism
and the backlash is changing, such that the two are happening
concurrently.
A further complication for linear and progressive feminist time is that
multiple strands of the politics seem to be operating ‘out of time’ with
mainstream feminism. It is for this reason that some theorists have
suggested that feminism should actually be conceived as multiple
strands, or, in fact, as a river, with tributaries and deviations ultimately
contributing to a whole (Henry 2004). These two analogies are posited
as especially effective because they recognise that not all feminisms
conform to the neat and chronological order that has been outlined
within a general understanding of the wave. For example, this contem-
porary has seen a resurgence of anti-pornography activism (Long 2012),
while it has been argued that ‘Radical Feminism’ is still influential and
active within British feminism (MacKay 2015). Both anti-porn activism
and radical feminism have been associated with a second-wave moment
of feminism, so their presence in the politics’ contemporary incarnation
queers such temporal delineations. The ‘sex-wars’ within feminism are
1
Certainly we can see this kind of fighting and resistance in relation to government in the UK
now and the shutting down of smaller and more vulnerable women’s services. Unison have
reported on the fact that women are disproportionately effected by cuts to the public sector:
https://www.unison.org.uk/about/what-we-do/fairness-equality/women/key-issues/women-and-
public-spending-cuts/. A 2011 survey reported by Women’s Aid states that 91% of women’s
services were facing potential cuts: https://www.womensaid.org.uk/information-support/what-is-
domestic-abuse/domestic-abuse-services/. The End Violence Against Women coalition has pre-
pared a briefing paper that outlines the need for specifically tailored services for women who have
experienced violence: http://www.endviolenceagainstwomen.org.uk/data/files/resources/72/
Survivors-Rights-EVAW-Coalition-September-2015.pdf. Thus, while feminism might be experi-
encing a wave of increased visibility and media attention, women’s services are suffering more
brutal cuts than before.
often understood as happening with the 1970s and early 1980s, where
there was a split between radical and libertarian feminism on the subject
of pornography and certain sexual acts (Cornell 2000; Long 2012).
While it is widely accepted that we have since passed that moment,
organisations like No More Page 3 demonstrate that there is still a strong
focus on the sexualised female body, in addition to what constitutes the
‘pornographic’.2 This demonstrates that the ‘fourth wave moment’ is
not revolutionising or changing feminism, in addition to the fact that
anti-pornography activism and radical feminism have never gone out of
style. In fact, they are as relevant now (or, as Long argues, more so) as
they were in the second-wave feminism of the 1970s. While we might
consider radical feminism and anti-porn feminism within our current
moment as ‘out of time’, both examples serve to demonstrate that a
linear progression of feminism, in which some ideologies and methodol-
ogies become lost or dropped, is not possible.
This concept of out of timeliness is also experienced and felt in
relation to black, minority and ethnic feminists, as well as women of
colour, where activism does not align totally and neatly with the for-
mulation of the waves. In fact, in periods of feminist history that are
often perceived as silent, there has been a significant amount of activism
by WoC. This is further complicated by the fact that predominantly
white feminism has not only excluded WoC, but worked directly against
their interests, choosing to overlook issues of race in a total rejection of
intersectional feminism (Thompson 2002). As such, there have been
points at which BME activists and WoC, as well as their allies, have
refused to identify as feminist, even while they are doing feminist work
(Thompson 2002). As such, important black feminist activism might be
overlooked, because those campaigning and acting within that moment
did not want to identify with a predominantly white and exclusionary
feminism. The third wave of feminism, however, has been strongly
associated with intersectionality (Evans 2015; Fernandes 2010).
2
No More Page 3 is an organisation that is tackling the inclusion of undressed women within the
Sun Newspaper. For more information on their campaigns see their website: https://nomore
page3.wordpress.com/about/.
Through championing intersectionality, the third wave positions itself as

the next step in a narrative of increased inclusivity. In spite of this, WoC
are still positioned as ‘temporal others’ (Fernandes 2010), still existing
beyond the timeframes that are suggested by predominantly white, wave
feminism. Thus, while wave narratives might seem to outline a sense of
progress by way of intersectionality, BME activists and WoC have a
history of being marginalised within the lit-up moments of feminist
history. This temporal otherness places unique demands on the way in
which feminism needs to reimagine its time keeping, in order to achieve
true intersectionality.
Feminist time, thus, requires multiple revisions. There is perhaps no
right way to account for temporality, but the more feminist interpreta-
tions, then the more nuanced our relationship with the wave narrative
can become. Considering queer theory’s relationship with feminism
creates a space in which the politics can be understood through its
‘unruly temporalities’ (McBean 2015: 3). In favour of privileging gen-
eration or linear models of timekeeping, time can be positioned as more
mobile, colliding within the moment of the contemporary. In approach-
ing temporality with an understanding of the unruly, it is possible for
feminism to restructure its relationship with the past and archiving,
which impacts on the contemporary. Feminism has a rich cultural
history, organised around specific rules and narratives. These regulatory
practices limit the way we can engage with the politics as a whole,
ensuring that women are only exposed to certain aspects of feminism,
while others might be more difficult to recuperate. Both the memoria-
lised and non-recuperated aspects of feminism’s past can be understood
as the ‘already-there’ (Withers 2015). The already-there forms an impor-
tant backdrop to contemporary feminism, suggesting that the past of the
movement has a very material presence which demands engagement.
It is imperative, then, that feminism is ‘mobile in response to shifting
conditions, and open to a variety of approaches that collide with specific sites
for political action’ (2014: 145), as Victoria Browne argues in Feminism,
Time, and Nonlinear History. A temporal mobility seems especially impor-
tant to allow for the shifting conditions of a new wave contemporary,
encouraging a collision of temporalities to inform particularly intense surges
of political action. This temporal mobility should also be able to adjust to
historical ‘othering’, ensuring that intersectionality is not just practised

within the contemporary, but applied to the history and future of feminism.
Such a methodology, of opening up time, allows for a contemporary that
‘contains both the insights of the past and the potential breakthroughs of the
future within the messy, unresolved contestations of political and intellectual
practice of the present’ (Fernandes 2010: 114). I aim to mobilise feminist
thought such that temporality can be revised in line with the emergence of
the fourth wave. In addressing the difficulty of writing about the immediate
present, I hope to establish the contemporary as a site for the future and the
past, while recognising that temporal awareness is difficult to achieve within
the immediacy of the unfolding present.
Terminology
In order to address the concept of an ‘affective temporality’, it is
necessary to define a number of the terms central to the idea.
Critiques of the wave narrative tend to focus on how the history of the
social movement has been constructed, in addition to the way a hege-
monic narrative has come to structure our understanding of the politics’
lineage. There are a number of interconnected terms that denote slightly
different understandings of time. It is important not to conflate these
terms, even while some of them might seem to stand as synonyms of one
another. Rather, I want to outline an approach to understanding time
itself, feminist history, organising narratives, and the way in which we
might reconceive temporality to allow for a more freeing approach to
feminism as a whole.
It is my contention that feminist timekeeping, particularly in relation
to the wave narrative, is allowing for more convergences and coales-
cences than is currently enabled by our conception of linear time.
Certainly, the linear understanding of time does not seem to resonate
with the way feminism needs to be organised. Whether a criticism of
historiography and history (Browne 2014), archival practices and knowl-
edge transmission (Withers 2015), or narrative and storytelling
(Hemmings 2011), there is a reluctance to understand feminism as
organising itself as a linear kind of inheritance. By this I mean that
each wave logically follows its predecessor, uncomplicatedly inheriting

both successes and failures, before contributing their own efforts to
progress. The criticisms of this model have been so wide ranging and
multiple that central terms relating to both time and the documentation
of political movements have come under severe scrutiny. It is here that I
aim to place these terms in dialogue with one another, creating a
reconceptualisation of the wave.
It would be easy to conflate ‘history’ with ‘the past’, but both require
different treatment in relation to feminist scholarship and activism. As
Browne asserts in Feminism, Time, and Nonlinear History, history has
two distinct meanings: ‘On the one hand, it is used to refer to events that
happened in the past. And on the other, it designates the practice of
history; the accounts we give of what we think happened in the past’
(2014: 50). History, thus, is understood in two ways; it is not purely the
events of the past, but the way in which we record, document and
account for what has happened in the past. Here, Browne is using the
‘past’ and ‘history’ in conjunction with one another to make evident the
difference between ‘what has actually happened’ and ‘what we under-
stand to have happened’ through the subjective ways we record and
remember events. While I agree with Browne’s dual definition of his-
tory, I want to elucidate an understanding of the past for the benefit of
this book. The ‘past’ could be understood as events that have ‘passed’, as
in, the time in which they existed or occurred has elapsed. It is a tense
that always precedes the present; the past has already happened, and,
therefore, its events cannot be changed, even while our perception of
them can be. In this way, revisionism becomes central to historical
understanding. The accounts that we give of history inevitably shape
and structure history itself; the telling-of allows for certain aspects of the
past to thrive within very specifically established frameworks. It could be
said, then, that the past exists, whereas history is constructed. Retrospect
may allow for the ordering of the past as a form of history, but such
retellings can often narrow the scope of the moment as it unfolded,
choosing instead to illuminate the easier and seemingly logical progres-
sions of time. As I will consider when I turn to ‘narrative’, many of our
problems lie in the way that stories are told, as opposed to the raw
materials of the story themselves.
Browne offers an interesting and useful reading of history, in which she

understands it as ‘lived time’, where ‘it is “real” in its effects and mani-
festation in social practices’ (2014: 26). Within ‘lived time’ she elabo-
rates, there is ‘no neat division between past, present, and future, and no
compulsory or rudimentary chronological temporality’ (2014: 31).
Returning to the ‘past’ once more, Browne suggests that history must
be understood in a material and embodied sense, the effects of which
can be felt in other tenses. In fact, through considering history as lived
time, the neat separation between the past, present and future is
blurred, and time itself does not seem to conform to an easy chronol-
ogy. Rather, time’s ‘lived-ness’ demands that the tenses converge such
that history becomes animate, as opposed to organised in inanimate
narratives. In this work, I am understanding history, then, as the means
by which the past of feminism comes to be organised, in order for an
understanding to develop within the present, which will inevitably
impact upon the future. In turn, then, the past is not perhaps as
‘finished’ as we might assume. It can visit on the present, impacting
the present’s unfolding, possibly through the pure virtue of remem-
brance and re-telling.
There is anxiety around the way chronology might work to support a
linear and progress-driven understanding of feminism. There is also
similar anxiety surrounding the way the most prolific feminist narratives,
in this case specifically, the wave, organise the politics such that they
seem to move from one clear point to the next on a predetermined
trajectory towards equality. As such, it is important to understand how
‘chronology’ might be of more use when addressing affective temporal-
ities, as opposed to linearity. The linear denotes a line; a straight
connection between historical points that cannot and will not be
deviated from. The rigidity of following lines also seems to imply certain
methodologies. Moving from one point to another narrows the scope of
feminism and creates paths through history that negate anything other
than what is clearly and easily accessible. Unsurprisingly, then, the linear
organises feminist activisms within certain periods, such that they are
inflexibly located within a closed timeframe. Furthermore, the narrow-
ness of the line ensures that a range of feminists are excluded from our
understanding of the social movement. In a linear understanding of the
politics, we prioritise those who are attempting measurable progress, as

opposed to considering difficulty, resistance and rejection as central to
the development of feminism. One must follow the line, to deviate is to
err. This suggests that certain forms of activism are incorrect or unassi-
milable into a feminist history; they have not directly facilitated the
movement from ‘A’ to ‘B’ and so cannot neatly contribute to the
forward progression of feminism. The linear further implies that a
simple and straight path can be cut through the political landscape.
Civil rights movements, however, operate with far greater complexity
than simply choosing the simplest and most logical route to equality. To
embrace this linearity, again, undermines the work of numerous femin-
ists on the periphery, who have interrogated gender norms, identity
politics, and feminism, without specific aims in mind. It suggests there
can be little conversation between the multiple waves, and that the
politics is concerned with a single method for achieving gender equality.
Chronology, in contrast, recognises how events have unfolded. As
opposed to being linear, it recognises how waves have fallen at specific,
different points throughout time. While I am making an argument
against understanding the waves as generational, or an inevitable part
of linear progress through the twentieth and twenty-first century, it is
undeniable that they have occurred within a chronological order. The
first wave in the UK, which can be attributed to women’s suffrage, is
often understood as ending when women finally received the vote (Pugh
2000; Rowbotham 1999), while the second wave is primarily under-
stood as having taken place in the 1970s (Rich 1995; Tong 2014). The
third wave, in contrast, is seen as a feminism that emerges within the
1990s, in relation to particularly technological advances, and an
increased interest in the punk scene, in tandem with poststructuralism
and gender theory gaining popularity within the academy (Tong 2014).
The waves have undoubtedly happened in chronological order.
However, this is not to say that their existence can be attributed solely
to the passing of time. By this I mean that the second wave did not
emerge purely because enough time had passed since the first wave.
Similarly, the third wave did not arise because the second wave was
deemed too old. It is the passing of time outside of feminism, the impact
it has on society, the progress that has inevitably taken place within
technology, that has necessitated the advent of the new wave. So, while
the waves are chronological, their relationship with temporality is far
more complex than a timeline might suggest. Rather than emerging at
arbitrary intervals, in which a new wave purely arises in response to the
passing of time since its predecessor, waves’ existences are determined
through responsiveness to their contemporary moment, which has her-
alded significant social change.
Browne addresses this issue in her chapter on ‘calendar time’, which she
understands as organising both immediate and distant history into a clear
chronology. While her work resists any definite models for temporality,
she does write that dismissing calendar time can be highly problematic, as
it is a means by which to understand both private and public time in a
practical sense (2014: 98). Indeed, in my discussion, while I have drawn
up a crude chronology, I am still heavily reliant on the years attributed to
the second and third waves. In my consideration of the fourth wave, later
in this book, I will be using calendar markers in my analysis of specific
recent events. It is not my intention, then, to do away with a chronolo-
gical understanding of the way in which public events have unfolded. I
understand that dates become necessary in relation to specific moments of
activism, even if specificity becomes blurred with the difficulty of describ-
ing each wave’s nascent moments. By this, I mean that while the date of
an occurrence might be irrefutable, the event’s place within the affective
formation of the wave cannot be understood immediately. In fact, the
repercussions of specific events for the fourth-wave moment might help to
sustain and fuel feeling, even if we are not able to recognise specifically the
contribution that it has made to the affective surge. Activism within the
present unfolds with such immediacy that while a date is possible, its
unique place within the constellation of the unfolding wave is harder to
identify. It is this chronological uncertainty that is especially useful in
considering the wave in relation to affect. That affect explores and takes
hold in a state of ‘in-between-ness’ goes some way to articulate the need
for calendar recognition, while simultaneously recognising its limitations.
Where there can be little precision with a chronology, there is the
possibility not only for the waves to open up, but also for there to be a
consideration of the way the past, present and future are all able to collide
in spite of a need to follow calendar time.
In addition to the wave, feminism has a number of narratives which

serve to organise the politics and its historical progression. Browne writes
that narratives are ‘the time of beginnings, middles, and ends; flashback
and flash-forwards; turning points and returns’ (2014: 74). It would
seem, then, that narratives offer their own contained form of time in
which there is a sense of completion. In the way that a beginning can be
identified, the ending also comes with a sense of total clarity. This
narrative then allows for a movement within, in which flash forwards
and backwards do not complicate the linear unfolding of time, but
rather consolidate the way in which the origin and ending stories are
told. As such, narratives could be understood as limited, and limiting.
This is perhaps best exemplified by the wave narrative, which overlooks
the continued efforts of activists who ‘fall between the waves’.
Organising feminist activism into three distinct units of time makes it
almost impossible to see outside of them, which serves to demonstrate
the way history is constructed through narrative.
In Why Stories Matter: the political grammar of feminist theory (2011),
Hemmings discusses narrative’s relationship with time even more expan-
sively. Choosing to focus in detail on the concept of ‘loss’ and ‘progress’,
Hemmings writes that both types of narrative can fix feminism within a
specific kind of linear temporality. While Love sees the turning back as
necessary to a forward-looking queer politics (2011), Hemmings suggests
that feminism’s focus on loss creates a stronger sense of rupture between
waves, thus consolidating them as linearly separated from one another.
Through focusing on loss, feminists of a preceding wave begin to measure
the new moment of activism as one that is lacking. As such, they come to
understand feminism as being degraded through the progression of time;
each decade increases the dilution of true activism and commitment.
Similar, however, is the emphasis placed on narratives of progress by the
newest incarnation of the wave. This sense of progression always positions
the new wave as superior: it is more in touch with the times, it has learnt
from the mistakes of its predecessor, and it is remedying any exclusions
perpetrated by the previous wave. Just as with the narrative of loss, the
narrative of progress diminishes possibility of a fluid approach to tempor-
ality. Instead, it consolidates the linear progression of feminist waves,
separating different moments of affective intensity from one another.
There is much disagreement over whether an all-encompassing narra-

tive is useful for Western feminism, or just a problematic ‘master narra-
tive’ (Laughlin et al. 2010). I am resistant, thus, to using any prefixes, such
as ‘meta’ or ‘master’ which might imply a totalising or universal approach
to feminism. The central narratives of the politics have become proble-
matic in that they are meant to account for feminism as a whole. Such an
all-encompassing project is impossible, particularly given how differently
the waves have been interpreted. Feminism is not just defined by the
people who affix themselves to it, but also in the way that the media of
that moment understands it. As such, representation of feminist activism
within specific moments is conditioned by popular culture and popular
media, resulting in a superficial and limited view of a wave. It is possible
that the wave narrative can be more open than is currently understood.
Not only is each wave more self-conscious of the exclusionary ways in
which they are organised, but there is also a historicist effort to revisit
previous waves in order to identify groups of people who have been
overlooked. Even more importantly, perhaps, is the revisionist story telling
of those who do not fit neatly into the wave, whose activism has sat
outside its reach and scope. This ensures that the wave narrative, while still
used, can no longer be seen as totalising and essentialist. The narrative
encompasses much smaller and tangential stories, as well as running
concurrent to entirely different feminist narratives. Thus, when I draw
on and use the narrative, it is with the understanding of the way the story
of Western feminism has been told, but in the hope that it might not be as
great a limitation as has been argued.
The Contemporary
Originating from social, political and economic inequality between the
genders, feminism is understood as having undergone three main itera-
tions, which are categorised as waves. However, what is interesting about
feminism’s relation with time is that the politics’ primary aim is to be
defunct – to move into a state of non-existence. It is, thus, aspiring to its
own out-datedness through attempts to create a society in which femin-
ism is no longer necessary. The tension that emerges from this, is that
while feminism places an emphasis on futurity, it hopes to be without a

future. This is not to say that the history of feminism will not be studied
or considered, but that it will not be operating as an active force within
the unfolding present. Feminists harbour the ‘desire that the future
should not simply repeat the past’, while simultaneously entertaining
the possibility of a world in which ‘feminism, as a politics of transforma-
tion, is no longer necessary’ (Ahmed 2004: 183). Political change is
instigated in order to secure a future that in no way replicates the
problems of the past. It is the past awareness, then, in addition to the
future aspirations, that orientate feminism within its contemporary
moment. The present is immediate: it is reactionary and difficult to
understanding as it unfolds. The past and future are the means by which
the politics is orientated, offering a haptic temporality, in which the
tenses converge upon one another to create a surge of activism.
Feminism imagines a future while maintaining a past, ensuring an
activism that responds to the necessities of a particular moment.
Withers ‘already-there’ speaks to the way that activists come to
feminism, understanding the history and contemporary of the move-
ment as something that is pre-existing their participation. Similar to the
way I am understanding the past of feminism, Wither’s book, Feminism,
Digital Culture and the Politics of Transmission: Theory, Practice and
Cultural Heritage suggests that whenever a new moment, wave or
feminist becomes part of the politics, they are entering a rich and diverse
conversation. Thus, in order to participate, or find a means by which to
move with the politics, one must become acquainted with the ‘already-
there’. This already-there finds different modes of transmission to ensure
that it is not forgotten. Obviously, this becomes increasingly difficult
with the ephemera and spontaneous activism of the music scene that
Withers chooses to focus on for her exploration of the archive. Most
usefully, in her consideration of the problematic of generation and the
passing on of knowledge, she describes waves as ‘a symptom of the
centrality of generational processes through which feminist knowledge
is transmitted’ (2015: 31). Through understanding the wave as irrever-
sibly related to generations, Withers argues that the intergenerational
transmission of knowledge is propagated through the narrative. This
ensures that hegemonic and dominant voices, in addition to well-
documented opinions, are transmitted into the future of feminism.

However, it is my supposition, as I outlined in my previous chapter,
that this domination of the ‘already-there’ has been problematised by the
scholarship surrounding exclusionary wave narratives. What is available
is determined by access and documentation: if it is impossible to locate
and engage with feminist resources, then while the ‘already-there’ might
exist, it cannot be mobilised usefully for the contemporary.
Finally, then I want to turn to the terms ‘present’, ‘moment’, and
‘contemporary’ to suggest the way the fourth wave of feminism is taking
shape. In order to avoid purely linear or chronological thinking, I will
draw on concepts of the ‘contemporary’ and the ‘moment’. These two
ideas differ from that of the present, which, in this book, works purely to
denote the tense between the past and future, an immediacy of experi-
ence that is always unfolding. The contemporary is differently formu-
lated, and relates very strongly to the idea of the moment. Rather than
meaning ‘the present’, the contemporary is the way in which the past,
present and future can converge on one another, comprising a moment
in which action and activities are mediated by a heightened awareness of
temporality. This, combined with specific affect, constitutes a moment
of indefinite length. The moment describes how the immediate present
of feminism can be contemporary, drawing on and fuelled by an
affective context. Moment suggests that this intersection of contempor-
ariness and presentness can actually make the wave slightly removed
from time; it is illuminated as distinct from a linear timeline, purely
because it becomes measured through the ambiguities of converging
feeling gaining momentum. The moment, then, refers to a period of
energy and enthusiasm, whose origins cannot be specifically pinpointed,
nor its ending precisely predicted. The moment can be post-rationalised,
having lasted an approximate length of time, and, thus, is a useful term
for discussing social movements within the framework of specific con-
verging affects.
It is useful to consider the waves as ‘moments’ (Kaeh Garrison). The
‘moment’ denotes a specific temporality, and as such, manages to evade
the trappings and fixity of a specific identity of group of feminists. This
is vital to reconceiving feminist waves as affective temporalities. My use
of the contemporary relates to thinking of the ‘moment’ as an important
feminist temporality. The contemporary takes effect within the moment

of activism, but combines it with a historical knowledge of feminism,
ensuring that the past is not undermined or forgotten within the present
conditions of activism. The energy of the fourth wave demonstrates
another surge in feminist activity, one that leads further towards the
future in which the politics is no longer necessary. In spite of its reliance
on past practice, a past that is integral to the formations of the present
moment, the wave’s development is dictated almost entirely by the
conditions of the moment. It is in this uncertain and mostly undefinable
collision of temporalities that activism and takes shape.
In ‘What Is the Contemporary?’ (2009), Giorgio Agamben addresses
what it means to be a contemporary subject – an idea I will extend to
feminism as a whole. He claims that those who truly embody the
contemporary and belong to their own time are those who ‘neither
perfectly coincide with it nor adjust themselves to its demands’ (2009:
40). It is on account of being in this state, which Agamben characterises
as ‘disconnection’ and ‘anachronism’, that a contemporary is especially
equipped for perceiving and understanding their own time (2009: 40).
Given my description of fourth-wave feminism as relating specifically to
a ‘moment’ of activism, the concepts of ‘imperfect coinciding’ and
‘adjusting’ become complicated. However, as I have suggested pre-
viously, moments themselves seem to exist slightly outside of a linear
understanding of time; they are less specifically defined in terms of time
frame and represent a sustained period of feminist activism. There is, in
a sense then, a kind of imperfect coincidence in which the fourth-wave
moment continues with its own momentum, in spite of time passing in a
chronological sense. Agamben’s statement that the contemporary cannot
adjust to the demands of its own time seems slightly at odds with my
argument that each wave is conditioned by its unique temporality. This
relationship suggests that the wave is directly responsive to the demands
of its own time, as opposed to refusing adjustment. Nevertheless, as I
have suggested previously, feminism responds to its long-term estab-
lished demands, which are then allowed to manifest in conjunction with
a social and political context. Until feminism no longer exists, its central
aim will remain timeless: complete equality between men and women.
As such, while each incarnation of the feminist wave is in some sense
taking its own time into account, it is still with an overarching past and
future objective. It does not so much adjust, as manifest with particular
force and adaptability, depending on the way in which the affective
moment is taking shape. It is feminism’s past and future emphasis, both
coinciding within the moment of activism, that ensure the movement is
disconnected and anachronistic; the disconnect is grounded in the
feminist look to the past, in the way that anachronism is cultivated
through the collision of temporalities. To be ‘within the moment’ of
feminism is to occupy a temporal space that is determined by multiple
tenses, and as such, a range of considerations that move the politics
slightly outside of both itself and its present setting.
Similar to my discussion of the necessity of chronology, Agamben
considers the concept of the ‘contemporary’ alongside time as a whole.
He writes that being contemporary works with chronological time,
pressing, urging and transforming it: ‘this urgency is the untimeliness,
the anachronism’ (2009: 47). While acknowledging chronological time,
which in a practical and embodied sense is impossible to avoid,
Agamben foregrounds its malleability. For feminism, occupying the
contemporary allows for a working with time. While still having the
quality of ‘untimeliness’, the affective moments create a specific and
pronounced temporality that seems like an occupation of time. It is the
consolidated presence of wave activism that is both within the time that
it creates, and untimely in relation to the temporal trajectories of
feminism itself. What is significant, here, is that a sense of periphery
and disconnection is necessary for a subject to operate effectively within
her own contemporary. Etymologically, ‘contemporary’ is from the
Latin ‘con’, with, and ‘tempor’, time. To be ‘contemporary’, then, is
not to be in time, but slightly untethered from it, urgent and transfor-
mative. Feminist waves capitalise on a sense of urgency, which, in some
senses, places them in a position of untimeliness. Highly aware of
history, hopeful for the future, recognising the necessity of activism
within the present moment, feminism’s urgency translates as a wave of
action, one that presses and transforms. It is this creation of a moment of
converging temporalities that carries a kind of ‘untimeliness’; so pre-
occupied with time in its multiple manifestations that the moment
carries a forceful weightiness within chronology.
In an attempt to communicate the uniqueness of the contemporary

moment, Agamben turns to an extended analogy of fashion. He argues
that it is nearly impossible to establish when ‘now’ begins; is it in the
conception, the enactment, the social reception? As such, the moment of
fashion is ‘an ungraspable threshold between a “not yet” and a “no
more”’ (2009: 48). This maps onto the concept of the moment in
relation to feminist waves, as well as elucidating the way waves can
only be post-rationalised. In spite of the declaration of an existence of
a ‘wave’, as stated in my previous chapter, it was impossible for activists
to prescribe specific action or anticipate the kinds of activism that would
emerge within that surge. When does a wave begin, and at what point is
it fully constituted and recognised? How does it gain momentum from
an uncertain starting point, and what symbolises its end? The wave,
then, while it can be declared, still remains an ungraspable in-between. It
constitutes a threshold in two senses: it looks to the history of feminism
and will create a different form of feminist futures; it looks to the society
and culture as presently constituted and aims for some kind of transfor-
mation. The contemporary, or wave, of feminism is a “not yet” and a
“no more”. The ‘not yet-ness’ of the contemporary recognises that aims
have not been achieved, in addition to the fact that this particular wave
might not be the moment that does achieve them. Not yet both relates
to the continued need for feminism, and the fact that feminism will
inevitably need to continue. The ‘no more’ speaks to the way in which a
wave of feminism is an energised rejoinder to society as it stands.
I want, now, to consider the sense of disconnect that Agamben sees as
so central to his conception of the contemporary. While my next chapter
on affect will consider the way feeling might adhere or stick a social
movement together, it is necessary to recognise the way time and
feminism might not cohere as easily. Feminists can become isolated
through their expression of unpopular political opinion (Ahmed
2010). By refusing to align with others, the feminist becomes one who
destroys happiness: she cannot maintain status quo, and so, she ruins a
peaceful continuation of the norm (Ahmed 2010). In the third- and
fourth-wave moments, this isolation is further compounded by a rejec-
tion of postfeminism irony. Refusing to participate in the knowing
disregard of feminism, a feminist will appear anachronistic, and by
extension, excluded from her own time. Postfeminism has become

particularly interesting for positioning feminism as ‘old fashioned’, in
the same way that certain methodologies of feminism might be called
‘dated’, because they no longer fit within a wider society. A strong
example of this is the No More Page 3 campaign in an age in which
female nakedness is so bound up with capitalism that taking clothes off
are positioned as empowering employment possibilities.3 Ahmed refers
to this form of feminism as ‘killing joy’, in which the refusal to align and
to laugh along creates a moment of incompatibility. As the times move,
while feminism might adapt to new technologies, it refuses to be ‘of its
time’, especially when modernity still means a sexist society.
Ahmed writes that the feminist killjoy spoils ‘the happiness of others;
she is a spoilsport because she refuses to convene, to assemble, to meet
up over happiness’ (2010: loc 930). The use of ‘happiness’ here raises
questions for affect that I will address later. Now, I am most interested in
the idea of convening and assembling in relation to temporality. The
refusal to become part of a wider group, as well as a resistance to
acknowledging happiness within patriarchal frameworks, inevitably
positions feminism as outside. By refusing to convene with a wider
society, feminism calls into question its own time. Wave incarnations
are not dictated by the elapsing of time, but, instead, shaped by social,
political and technological changes that are a direct result of the pro-
gression of time. Thus, a wave manifestation of feminism, while respon-
sive to its chronological moment, still maintains the contemporariness of
not convening around the same objects of pleasure as a wider society.
Importantly, Ahmed extends the necessity of disconnection to within
feminism itself. As such, ‘we need to stay uncomfortable . . . “not sink-
ing” into the spaces in which we live and work’ (Ahmed 2004: 178).
This concept of not sinking should be extended beyond an internal
critique of feminism, to an understanding of how to maintain a sense of
3
Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture (2005), Natasha
Walter’s Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism (2011), Laurie Penny’s Meat Market: Female Flesh
Under Capitalism (2011) and Nina Power’s One Dimensional Woman (2009) are all examples of
texts that address the commodification of women’s bodies posturing as feminism, or
empowerment.
the contemporary. Feminism should not sink into its own time, lest it
becomes too entrenched within responding directly to issues with tem-
poral immediacy. Instead, it needs a wider perspective, drawing on the
past and thinking about the future, to ensure that it remains with time as
opposed to trapped within it.
Obscurity and Hapticity

These ideas of not ‘sinking’ into our own time, and experiencing a form
of disconnection, relate to Agamben’s discussion of the contemporary. In
order to be truly contemporary, one is not able to fixate upon the light of
a time but, rather, is drawn to its ‘darkness’ (Agamben 2009: 44).
Refusing to be blinded by the lights of their specific moment, the
contemporary is instead drawn to ‘shadows of those lights’ (2009: 45).
A contemporary, then, needs to address the darkness of her own time.
The combination of both anachronism and disconnection allows for the
contemporary to identify darkness, in spite of the light that might be
emanating simultaneously. While I do not want to build upon this
symbol of light and darkness, in part because it establishes a rigid binary,
I do want to tease out the implications of the two for waves of feminism.
Darkness, in this sense, could be that which is nearly entirely eclipsed by
light. This is especially important in years following significant legislative
change for women: instead of basking in the glow of one very public
advancement, there should be concern about the other forms of darkness
that are thriving in its shadows. Secondly, the analogy could relate to the
way we understand visibility. Certainty, the culture of speaking up and
speaking out in feminism is not because women have a pathological need
to air their grievances. Instead, it prioritises the making visible of experi-
ence that might otherwise go unacknowledged. To be a contemporary
feminist then, within a wave moment, is to recognise the darkness that
accompanies the brighter shafts of light, and to render visible those things
which reside in the shadow of a beam of progress.
It is my contention that this is strongly facilitated by a haptic
approach to temporality. In the acts of looking back, acting now,
aspiring to a future, feminism can allow for this interplay between the
dark and the light. The contemporary carries a kind of darkness, which
is inevitable when the past and future converge within a moment of
intense activism. It is this awareness of the relationship between
temporality and progress that makes feminists especially aware of
their contemporary moment. In spite of progress implying a linear
and quantifiable movement forwards, as I have discussed in this chap-
ter, it can actually mean significant regression, or alternatively, a form
of stasis. Thus, the convergence of the past and future within the
present moment becomes vital for the ways feminists can use their
difficult histories and potential futures to create a contemporary acti-
vism. If ‘histories can “touch” one another . . . the affective charge of
investment, of being “touched”, brings the past forward into the
present’ (Cvetkovich 2003: 49). Using ‘history’ is important to
describe past feminisms, now framed within specific discourses, revisit-
ing upon the present moment. Not all of the past will converge to
create the contemporary, but certain aspects of the history of feminism
will seem to touch a newer incarnation of the wave. The concept of
being ‘touched’ is also central to my understanding of temporality and
affect in relation to one another; the being touched can result in a form
of being ‘moved’, which allows for a certain temporal mobility. With
feminists who were galvanised during the second, third and fourth
waves, all working together within a ‘fourth wave moment’, histories
are perpetually touching the present. In this touching of various
histories, the contemporary is imbued with a specific kind of affect,
which, being moved to movement, is enabled by a consideration of
temporality and politics,
This brings me, finally, to a consideration of the present moment of
activism. As I have stated previously, I am wary about working with the
term ‘present’, purely because its rapidity, its immediacy and its finitude,
all make it difficult in terms of exploring and understanding sustained
feminist activism. However, it is important to recognise that activism
does evolve within the ever-moving present, which leads to a further
sense of obscurity. The present cannot be understood as it unfolds, and
so, the presentness of a new wave of feminism also eludes definitive
definition, at least until it has become established as a contemporary
moment. Love writes that nascent political movements can initially be
detected as impulses, long before they become more established: ‘we can
understand and respond to a historical moment that is not yet fully
articulated in institutions as the dominant mode of existence’ (2007:
12). Specifically, then, while we might be able to recognise that a
feminist wave is taking shape, constituting the formation of a con-
temporary political moment, it has not been articulated or acknowl-
edged to the extent that it becomes institutional. The wave, in its
developing stages, can therefore avoid becoming both institutionalised
and assimilated within the dominant mode of existence, a mode that
still functions for the most part, within a patriarchy. It is the uncer-
tainty of the impulses, which can be felt as opposed to understood, that
make up the unique energies of an affective temporality. Simply put,
reactionary activism cannot be fully visible or understood as it gains
momentum and germinates. Inevitably, then, archives of documenta-
tion emerge retrospectively, looking to the reports and paraphernalia
that emerged within the immediacy of the political moment. Such
responsive activism is motivated by affect, or forms of affect, which
serve as the catalyst for action.
Conclusion
This chapter has considered the way time is understood by both
queer theorists and feminists, with the aims of revising its relation-
ship with political movements. It is apparent that temporality, as
understood in a linear sense, does not facilitate the understanding of
feminist past, nor its possibilities for a present and future. Similarly,
the construction of feminist history ensures the prioritising of some
stories over others, as well as the constraint of certain activisms and
methodologies to certain time periods. In reality, feminism has been
far more flexible in its approaches to activism and identity. The
arguments between essentialism and constructivism did not only
emerge with Judith Butler and the third wave (Elam 1994; Fuss
1989), in the same way that Black Feminist activism was not entirely
absent from the second wave, which prioritised white, educated
experience (hooks 2014; Lorde 2013; Walker 2004). It is clear
from some of the examples that I have used in this chapter that
ironing feminism into a linear understanding of time helps to efface
the diversity and multiplicity of the politics. Furthermore, it forces
theorists to approach each wave as embodying a specific identity, one
that fixes it within a historical position, while ensuring that some
aspects of feminism remain locked in the past. While we might learn
about them, and pay tribute to them, their way of doing things has
become dated and useless.
These problems led to my discussion of both chronology and narra-
tive. Even while I might be rejecting linear time, it is necessary to
recognise that feminist achievements and aims could be organised into
a chronology. The vote, for example, happened within a specific year,
just as equal pay followed it many decades later. There are certain
chronological points in feminism that cannot be overlooked, so it is
important to acknowledge that the political movement is still in some
way bound to a chronological sense of time. This is not to say that
feminism is enjoying linear progressions and an ongoing trajectory of
success, but rather that time passing cannot be ignored within the
study of any civil rights movement. That time passes, however, does
not necessarily translate into the feeling that any kind of progress has
been achieved. Our relationship with the chronology of feminism is
complicated by the narratives that emerge from it. As Hemmings
identifies, the movement from second to third wave spawned both
progress and loss narratives, where the time lapse between the two was
considered evidence of either a sense of dawning modernity, or the
feeling that something had been lost. These narratives, particularly,
serve to consolidate a feminist chronology in a way that is limiting.
They fix the second and third waves in place in order to make a case for
advancement or regression; they also imply a division between the two
incarnations, as opposed to any kind of continuity. Just as with
linearity, then, chronology and narrative raise problems for the way
in which feminism’s relationship with temporality can be productively
mobilised.
I have suggested that it is useful to think of each wave as a con-
temporary, or a feeling moment. The contemporary is convergences of
the past, present and future, appreciating that each one informs the
moment of nascent fourth-wave activism as it evolves. Feminism, then,

could be positioned as slightly out of time, in that it does not necessa-
rily align itself with a forward-looking march of progress, a linear
understanding of female rights, or a complete focus on the future
with a total dismissal of the past. While feminist waves might operate
within their own specific moment, their temporal convergences, and
attempts to identify the obscurity of their particular time mean there is
a kind of simultaneity at work. Before I move to a consideration of
affect, it is worthwhile considering that affect can be understood as ‘born
in in-between-ness’, and that it ‘resides as accumulative beside-ness’ (Gregg
and Seigworth 2010: 2). This definition resonates the formulation of the
‘contemporary’, which could be understood as with time, as opposed to
within it. Thus, the out-of-timeliness of contemporary feminism resonates
with the concept of an ‘in-between-ness’ in affect theory, in which the
politics can situate itself between multiple temporalities, methodologies
and feelings, in order to nurture the starting of a new wave.
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Thompson, Becky, ‘Multiracial Feminism: Recasting the Chronology of
Second Wave Feminism’ Feminist Studies Vol. 28, No. 2 (Summer 2002),
pp. 336–360.
Walker, Alice (2004) In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose.
Orlando: Harvest Books.
Walters, Natasha (2011) Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism. London: Virago
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Withers, Deborah (2015) Feminism, Digital Culture and the Politics of
Transmission: Theory, Practice and Cultural Heritage. London and New
York: Rowman & Littlefield International.
4
Affective Temporalities
This chapter will explore affect and how its relationship with tem-
porality can create waves of activism within feminism. Focusing on
the elusiveness and uncertainty of affect, I will discuss how it is a
force that must be experienced within the moment, as opposed to
identified and rationalised. Affective moments ‘do not arise in order
to be deciphered and decoded or delineated’ (Gregg and Seigworth
2010: 21), and, as a result, I will not be suggesting a methodology
for delineation or decoding affects as they emerge within the
moment. Rather, I will explore how affect might stick political
subjects together, creating a specific form of public feeling that
sustains itself for a limited period of time. I will also address why
affect is especially useful for feminist waves, in spite of the difficulty
of equating the social movement with emotion and feeling.
Ultimately, this chapter will suggest that affect’s uncertainty, its
force, and the passages that it creates through time, allow for feminist
waves to emerge without an immediate call for dogma or precision.
Initially, I will discuss the multiple ways of understanding affect. It
straddles a number of disciplines, some of which focus on biological
and physiological possibilities, while others are more social movement

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53682-8_4
orientated. Having established my use of affect, which focuses pri-

marily on the relationship between individual subjects and political
collectives, I will contextualise affect, drawing on Deleuze and
Guattari before reconsidering the term as a kind of ‘in-between-
ness’ and ‘force’. Discussing the relationship between feelings and
affect, I will map political emotion onto feminism within this con-
temporary moment. The uncertainty of affect, as well as the inability
to define it with complete clarity, lends itself to the way I am
approaching the wave narrative. It recognises that surges of energies
and forceful feelings might manifest as a social movement, even if the
combinations of these feelings are difficult to delineate and define.
My primary argument against the wave narrative is that it divides
feminism too neatly into generations and identities. The lack of
certainty and the indivisibility that accompanies the use of affect is
useful, then, for circumventing these problems of easy categorisation.
Instead, it forces a turn to the uncertain, the ill-defined, the cumu-
lative, adaptable and converging, recognising how forceful political
action is formulated through multiple forms of feeling.
However, affect is not always positive – many of the feelings produced
by a world that requires feminism are negative. While activists might
find some respite within shared feeling, and the solidarity that entails,
the social movement is not always a rejoinder to the negative affects
produced by the misogyny of the wider society. Instead, it has to ride the
wave of the bad affects, using them to fuel a surge of action. More
problematically, feminism is not immune to bad feeling from within.
There are times in which the social movement can become divided over
specific issues. Furthermore, in spite of continuing attempts at inter-
sectionality, there are still ongoing exclusions. It is at these points that
the multiplicity of affects become difficult: their strength and transmis-
sion certainly maintains contemporary forcefulness, but can potentially
result in division. These negative affects from within feminism are
necessary as a form of critique. While they might not always be welcome,
and similarly, make people feel uncomfortable, it is that discomfort that
compels feminism to continue to progress. The politics is not purely
shaped by an external affective context, but continually adapting to the
affects that are produced within.
4 Affective Temporalities 75
Understanding Affect
Affect, as a term, is multiple both in its manifestations and in the way
that scholarship chooses to approach it. Different disciplines also have
very different investments in affect; for example, those working in
neuroscience might take a more empirical approach to the measure-
ment of emotion and its impacts, while sociologists might be attempt-
ing to trace the way in which public feeling galvanises political
movements. Looking to the dictionary, affect can be understood in
both the verb and noun sense. The latter understands ‘affect’ as an
emotion or strong feeling that goes on to influence behaviour (Oxford
English Dictionary 2017). It is significant, that even in its noun form,
affect emphasises movement. It does not purely encapsulate feeling, or
desire, but is also realised in resultant behaviour. Affects, then, are not
static. They lead to action, or influence behaviour, so that the subject
experiencing the feeling or desire is moved. The verb formulation
seems to support this sense of mobility, where ‘to affect’ is to make a
difference to or have an effect on, to have touching feelings, or be
moved emotionally (Oxford English Dictionary 2017). It’s useful to
unpack these slightly different definitions to think about their bearing
on my discussion of temporality. In the first definition regarding
difference and effect, it is important to note the prepositions ‘to’ and
‘on’. Much like the noun form of affect, the implication is that affect
moves a subject or requires the movement of feeling. Something,
whether it is a person or a situation or a feeling, is changed by affect.
The concept of ‘touching feelings’ is interesting when read in dialogue
with haptic temporalities, times that touch one another. Affect is the
touching of feelings, which are activated by this form of contact. In the
same way that moments of intense activism require a strong awareness
of past formulations, future aspirations and engagement with the
contemporary, feelings too can converge and touch one another.
This leads me, finally, to the moving of emotions. Once more the
emphasis is equally distributed between the feeling and then the move-
ment it catalyses. Affect seems to suggest that feeling and its concomi-
tant mobility are inextricably linked. In this sense, it can move subjects
towards certain politics in the same way that whole social movements
can be created from specific affective environments.
Affect can be understood through a range of different disciplines, and
these disciplinary approaches ensure that it remains multiple. It’s also
necessary to think about the means and ends in terms of affect. It is not
purely a methodological difference that ensures this range of approaches,
but the ultimate aim in investigating affect. A neuroscientist is very
much located within the operations of the brain, and understanding
how the organ works. A sociologist, in contrast, might be attempting to
understand specific political movements and the ways they have been
informed by affect. For scientists and neuroscientists, then, the approach
to affect is far more clearly determined. It requires the production of
empirical data as well as bodily investigation, in which biology is central
to both discovery and impact. Neuroscience has addressed the concept
of several basic emotions, inherent to each human being, while also
using neuroimaging to contest the hypothesis of universally experienced
feelings (Wetherall 2012). There have also been physiological explora-
tions of affect, considering the way in which feeling manifests both
physically and materially within the body. For example, anger often
raises the blood pressure and increases the pulse, demonstrating that
feeling can be experienced in a very embodied sense (Wetherall 2012).
The body’s engagement with affect has been used by a number of social
theorists such as Theresa Brennan, who considered the importance of
the olfactory senses and smell in the spread of feeling amongst large
groups of people (Brennan 2004).
My interest here, however, moves away from the more scientific
disciplines to a consideration of the way that affect can stick bodies
together in a coherent social movement. In order to address this, I will
be considering the qualities of affect as a force, as liminal, and finally as
sticky, with the ability to adhere subjects. With these aims in mind, it is
most useful to work within an affective praxis that ‘focuses on the
emotional as it appears in social life and tries to follow what participants
do. It finds shifting, flexible, and over-determined figurations rather
than simple lines of causation character types and neat emotional
categories’ (Wetherall 2012: 4). Here, the concept of ‘social life’ is
important to addressing feminism. The use of life implies a certain
kind of everyday nature. Feminist waves, in contrast, seem to be a

difficult combination of everyday affects of social life, reaching a cres-
cendo, or at least coming to a point in which the status quo is no longer
sustainable. It recognises, in the surges of activism, that the social life can
no longer continue as it has done, because everyday affects are becoming
too unbearable. Ordinary feelings are structured around a ‘continual
motion of relations, scenes, contingencies, and emergences’ (Fraser
2007: 2). The contingencies and scenes of these ordinary affects are
‘public feelings that begin and end in broad circulation, but they’re also
the stuff that seemingly intimate lives are made of’ (Fraser 2007: 2). The
emphasis on mobility is key: affect moves, and is moving, transferred
between subjects, and emotionally impactful. However, its formulations
are highly contingent, it can be swayed or changed by different scenes
and emergences, such that there is a sense of evolution within affective
charges. This seems especially relevant to the feminist waves sustaining
themselves. Once there is an initial momentum, the wave must be able
to adapt to the contingencies of its affective temporality, lest a change in
feeling results in its dissipation. It is also significant that Fraser’s ordinary
affects bridge the difficult gap between the public and personal. While
they might be broadly circulated, moving activists to join one another, as
well as fuelling social movements, they play out within microcosms too.
It is the relationship between the broadly felt and the personally experi-
enced that allows for particularly effective affective movements, recog-
nising both the public and private nature of everyday living.
This concept of the personal, while fundamental to feminism, has a
difficult relationship with the understanding, and realisation, of affect.
This is, in part, because the personal arises from many intersections of
identity, each of which brings its own political investments and associa-
tions to the fore. Not only that, but different identities are encoded in a
specific way by wider society and thus associated with certain affects
before they have even begun a discussion of feeling. Sara Ahmed (2010b)
writes about the ways that affect can be formulated through positioning
within wider society. Feminists are immediately considered killjoys
because they refuse to convene around the happiness of a society that
is still inherently misogynistic. In the refusal of happiness, feminists are
seen to represent unhappiness and a lack of enjoyment. This kills joy: it
produces negative affects, and, in turn, associates feminism with purely

negative affects. In his translation of Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand
Plateaus, Brian Massumi writes that affect does not relate to personal
feeling at all, but rather is a ‘prepersonal intensity corresponding to the
passage from one experiential state of the body to another and implying
an augmentation or diminution of that body’s capacity to act’ (Massumi
1987: xvi). However, Ahmed’s reading on affect seems to create space in
which the personal can thrive. It is impossible not to take it personally
when identity results in your being configured or understood a certain
way: as killing joy, or as perpetually angry. It is also a personal experience
of the world that creates the affects that move us outwards into wider
contexts, in the same way that the wider context can have an intense
impact on the personal. So, while affective experience might be located
in the body, in a way that seems to elude personal consciousness, when it
comes to social movements, the personal and affective engagement are
inextricably tied to one another.
Guattari and Deleuze allow for affect to occupy multiple positions,
reframing and re-contextualising the term in relation to animals, becom-
ing, perception and warfare. While I will briefly examine these various
understandings, my primary focus will be on affect as a form of becom-
ing, which seems most generative in relation to feminist waves. It is
significant that Deleuze and Guattari refer to affect within the animal
kingdom because that seems to resonate with the concept that it might
occur at a level of pre-consciousness. They suggest that affect ‘is the
effectuation of power of the pack that throws the self into upheaval and
makes it reel’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 240). This implies that while
affects might not reside within the realm of the personal, they move an
individual, later referred to as subject, into a group dynamic in which the
force and strength of extimacy create collective coherence. Both authors
elucidate that all kinds of groupings, ranging from schools to herds, to
whole populations, are created entirely through affect and power, which
forces every animal and subject to engage in a form of becoming. It is
through participating within the affectively formulated groupings that
the individual is encouraged to undergo their own processes (1987:
241). This form of becoming creates collectives, which in turn, engage
in their own adaptations and developments. Social forms and formations
can be a locus for affectivity to become powerful. Not only is an animal

or subject moved to collectivity, or stuck within it, through the adhesive
nature of affect, but it is also propelled into its own ‘becoming’. Later
within the text, Deleuze and Guattari make this very claim, writing
‘affects are becomings’ (1987: 256). Affects seem to suggest a liminality,
in which a subject enters into a state of upheaval that nonetheless places
them in motion amongst a larger collective.
Deleuze and Guattari consider affect in relation to both the individual
and social, using the concept of the ‘body’ to extrapolate links between
the two. They write that ‘we know nothing about a body until we know
what it can do, in other words, what its affects are, how they can or
cannot enter into composition with other affects’, considering how these
passions and actions might ultimately result in the joining of a more
powerful body (1987: 257). What is most useful about this considera-
tion of the body and affect is that the latter is positioned as a form of
‘doing’. As I have suggested throughout this chapter, affects are not
passive, but actually require a subject to be moved. Affects denote
mobility and action, processes that constitute an ongoing and contin-
gent form of becoming. The body becomes functioning and functional
on account of the way in which its affects operate. Deleuze and Guattari
do not specify what ‘affect’ is, focusing instead on the way it works, as an
exchange of action or passion that moves a body to become part of a
more powerful and larger body. This is, undoubtedly, a form of becom-
ing, in which a subject moved into a collective then participates in the
group movement created through affective intensity. What is difficult,
however, for affect scholars and social movements attempting to narrate
their own emergence is that these becomings are ‘below and above the
threshold of perception’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 281). If affects
cannot be perceived, then their recognition becomes problematic,
located in an ability to feel and feel collectively and for this to create
some kind of momentum or action. Certainly, the way in which Deleuze
and Guattari approach affect differs significantly from the neuroscience
investment in set basic affects, which can all be categorised. Navigating
between both approaches could suggest that personal affects are identifi-
able, but that their affecting nature and the public process of becoming
that they entail are not as easily outlined. If affects are ultimately a form
of motion and movement, it is difficult to preempt the direction or

speed that mobility will take. Instead, the mobility must be experienced
and ridden, almost as a wave, allowing for external influences and
contingencies to shape its development.
Deleuze and Guattari seem to agree with this possibility when they
suggest that it is through the moving of the feelings from interiority, to a
position of exteriority, that the subject is propelled into movement
herself. They write that this kind of externalising ‘lends them [the
subject] an incredible velocity, a catapulting force: love or hate, they
are no longer feelings but affects’ (1987: 356). As I have suggested
previously, in spite of Massumi’s willingness to differentiate between
feeling and affect, there is an undeniable relationship between the
personal and then the externally affective. Through this uprooting, a
subject can engage in the social act of becoming, which has the capacity
to be political. Both writers suggest the affects engage with the external
world in a way that emotions and feelings cannot. Affect is active in
terms of its engagement, while emotion might actually lead to a greater
internalising. The concept of affect working as a discharging of emo-
tions, especially in relation to a collective, in public spaces and social
contexts, can be useful for a forceful engagement with politics. It also
demonstrates, for feminism, the ways that individual subjects can be
moved to participate in a social movement. This allows for whole social
movements that are constituted through affective ties to one another:
they create affects and are, in turn, affected, by their context and the
feeling that has led them to a wider group.
Returning to the idea that the personal is political, affect allows for the
movement of the personal into the public sphere, ensuring that the private
realm does not remain separate to the social. It also suggests that there are
important links to be made between the inward and outward. These links
are often difficult to make: it is not easy to reconcile politics and feelings
with one another. Politics are public and large, outward facing, collective
and dictated by time, while feelings are small and internal, not necessarily
operating alongside chronological time. The scope of both makes evident
that ‘the public sphere and affect are different kinds of objects; as such,
they have different histories, critical frameworks, they call for different
kinds of responses’ (Love 2007: 11). Inevitably, it is challenging to map
what is ostensibly a more personal and feeling sphere onto a wider public,
or indeed, vice versa. However, despite the difference between the perso-
nal and public sphere, affect creates an undeniable relationship between
the two. As suggested by Deleuze and Guattari, affect is a transmittable
form of becoming, while ‘feelings’ are more located within the individual
subject. So, affect might create some form of passage for individual feeling
to be moved into shared social experience, with a subject becoming both
affected and affecting.
It might be, then, that feminism is the continual staging of the
collision between personal feeling and political affect. Certainly, there
is no disillusion about the way politics invade the personal within the
UK. Abortion is still prohibited in Ireland by the law, and there have
been numerous debates surrounding how the UK should legislate against
rape, including conviction rates and length of sentences.1 When the
political and the personal become inseparable from one another, making
the personal political is a tactic: it becomes an imperative to make visible
the minutiae of women’s lives, including the details that seem too
intimate for public recognition. Alternative to encouraging introversion
or separation amongst feminists, the result is a kind of public intimacy
where the personal is political, the political is personal, and the public
sphere becomes imbued with feeling. This public intimacy is central to
the transference of affect within feminist waves. Airing feeling and
allowing the feeling to be aired creates a context in which responses
and emotions become integral to public or political movements. Given
our contemporary reliance on social media as a means by which to
express feeling, ‘extimacy’ is very much a symptom of this current
moment, where ‘the public sphere is increasingly used to communicate
1
For further information on abortion in Ireland, see Marie Stopes website: https://www.maries
topes.org.uk/overseas-clients-abortion/irish/abortion-and-law/abortion-law-republic-ireland. The
illegality of abortion forces a number of women to come over to England for the procedure, for
which they cannot be prosecuted on return. The Crown Prosecution Services has released data
suggesting that crimes against women are at their highest level of reportage, as well as seeing
positive increases in convictions: https://www.cps.gov.uk/publications/docs/cps_vawg_report_
2014.pdf. However, prominent cases such as that of Ched Evans has demonstrated the leniency
with which some courts treat convicted rapists, who are then able to multiply appeal their
convictions.
what were once regarded as private passions’ (Thrift 2010: 294). While
this speaks to contemporary technology and a culture of confession that
is facilitated through social media and blogging, it is also useful for
thinking about feminism. Current technologies cultivate an environ-
ment of public intimacy and its affective results. This suggests that the
privacy traditionally associated with the body and personal experience
have been necessarily transferred into the public sphere, such that the
affect these feelings produce can galvanise feminist collectives.
In their introduction to The Affect Theory Reader, Melissa Gregg and
Gregory J. Seigworthy state that ‘affect arises in the midst of in-between-
ness: in the capacities to act and be acted upon’ (2010: 1). This resonates
with Deleuze and Guattari’s understanding of the way affects perhaps
evade ‘perception’. The sense of in-between-ness created by affects does
introduce a sense of liminality, a journey between points, a process that
leads from start to outcome. In acting and being acted upon subjects
might find themselves moved to action even while they are not able to
specifically identify what is motivating them. The affects, then, in
initiating and sustaining process, in converging and adapting, but none-
theless creating an environment of action, are difficult to pin down or
categorise clearly. This sense of the in-between-ness, related to the
‘acting’ and ‘being acted upon’, the passage and duration, speaks to
the relationship between temporality and political activism. Political
action is necessitated by a desire to move from one set of relations or
one state of being to another. The activism, as a result, is positioned as a
middle ground in the fight for achievable objectives, where past condi-
tions dictate aspirations for a different future. The in-between is also
useful for thinking through the difficulty of engaging in social move-
ment or forms of feeling that cannot be defined. The sense of process
and transience implied by being between one state and another allows
for affect to emerge and grow without becoming stifled through defini-
tion. As a result, a passage can emerge in which acting and acting upon
simultaneously contribute to the affectivity of the moment.
Seigworthy and Gregg go on to suggest that affect can be ‘a momen-
tary or sometimes more sustained state of relation as well as the passage
(and the duration of passage) of forces or intensities’ (2010: 1). Once
more, this speaks to the important relationship between temporality and
the forces that cohere social movements. This state of relation is espe-
cially important for the way affect and then feminist politics operate.
The relation, in one sense, could refer to the activists who participate or
are active within a feminist wave. The wave is constituted through the
activists’ relations to one another, and how those relations ensure a
continuation of affective engagement. However, it could also relate to
the temporality of feminism as outlined in my previous chapter. The
state of relation is in fact a heightened awareness of the relationship
between feminism’s past, present and future, allowing for the tenses to
converge upon the contemporary moment of activism. Finally, it is
possible that the relation refers to feminism’s place within a wider social
context; a context that has necessitated and thus formed, the newest
incarnation of the wave narrative. Feminism’s contingency is actually a
result of affect’s contingency, in which the relational aspects of both
ensure that the politics is adaptable to external and internal stimuli. This
leads me to the concept of the passage of force and intensity, which
speaks to the uncertainty of specifically defining affects, shifting focus
instead to the kind of momentum that they actually create when
considered en masse. Passages imply the way affect facilitates movement:
it creates a space in which social movements are possible. It also relates,
once more, to the temporality of feminist waves. The wave could be
considered as a durational passage of force: it creates a space in which
movement can occur, and will last as long as the affects adhere to one
another, creating a momentum through the force of externalised feeling.
Affect, when applied to a political context, becomes a force that unites
people through reciprocity. This force carries intensity such that a
passage of action is made evident to those who act and are acted upon
by the affect proliferating within their group. The passage may be types
of activism, the aspirations for social change or just the links created
between subjects and political groupings. Notably, Seigworth and Gregg
claim that ‘affect is in many ways synonymous with force’ (2010: 2). This
concept of ‘force’ is vital when affect is considered in conjunction with
politics, offering an explanation for the ways feeling can drive activism
and action. Despite the lack of definition that surrounds affect, it does
reflect a sudden surge of energy towards certain objects, events or
politics. This force sustains the affect and turns the public feeling into
productive action. Both force and in-between-ness are fundamental to

the understanding of affect’s operations and integral for thinking
through the formation of collectivities. In-between-ness acknowledges
that a subject moved to political action can, in turn, be acted upon by
the contexts that have facilitated their politicisation. Through this, affect
suggests relations in addition to trajectories: it is formulated through
links and communications. These links necessitate movement for a
subject, whether that is towards achieving a tangible political aim or
establishing communities. Affect is also central to the formation of the
communities towards which a political subject may be drawn. As
Seigworth and Gregg note, it ‘accumulates across both relatedness and
interruptions in relatedness . . . traversing the ebbs and swells of inten-
sities that pass between “bodies”’ (2010: 2). In this sense, bodies are not
only recognised biologically but also understood ‘by their potential to
reciprocate or co-participate in passages of affect’ (2010: 2). This under-
standing of force and affect becomes particularly important for my aim
of reconsidering the wave narrative.
So far, I have identified a few characteristics that are fundamental to
my understanding of affect within the context of a feminist wave. Most
importantly, is that affect itself seems to elude definition, or at least have
uses across so many disciplines that it is hard to define in one uniform
sense. In considering affect in relation to the social, there is a strong
emphasis on acting upon and acting alongside. In relation to feminism,
this recognises that the affective social context, in conjunction with the
affects produced by the politics, ensures that action happens.
Furthermore, it appreciates that feminist subjects are acted upon by
their surroundings, as well as the affects of feminism itself, which in
turn draws them into the affective temporality that constitutes that
specific wave moment. Whilst I will not be addressing the idea that
affects spread biologically, like some form of contagion or virulent strain
of bacteria, it is evident that bodies are moved to engage with the larger
bodies of whole movements. This brings me to the second fundamental
aspect of affect: that it is analogous to motion. This operates in two
senses: when different affects converge to create a real intensity, there is a
surge of public feeling, which, in its force and power, constitutes a wave.
Secondly, it aligns affect with ‘social movements’ such as feminism,
where the politics are focused on mobility, engaging with temporality to

ensure that there is a continued movement from feminism’s origins to its
ultimately desired demise. The idea of ‘being moved’ is also central to
the next chapter, in which I discuss specific fourth-wave case studies.
These case studies make links between the emotions provoked by certain
experiences, the activism that emerges from them, and the affective
temporality this creates in relation to the fourth wave.
Affective Difficulty
While affect might be useful for addressing a social movement that uses
wave narratives, as well as the relationship between the personal and the
political, it does have difficulties and limitations. As I have stated
previously, affect can be measured and understood through multiple
frameworks, some of which are empirical, while others rely on more
qualitative and descriptive approaches. One of the difficulties regarding
affects being understood as a force that defies definition is that it
becomes increasingly complicated to identify or describe exactly what
is at stake. While, within this book, I can describe some of the basic
affects outlined by neuroscience (it is unsurprising that women would be
angry about street harassment, for example), it is harder to express the
affective temporality produced by the mass combination of a number of
feelings. It is also difficult to anticipate the way the force might take
shape, as well as the kind of passage it will ultimately create. These ideas
can be shored up and defined further in retrospect, but within the
moment, their amorphous and adaptable nature ensures that they are
not easy to define with total precision. Furthermore, my particular
approach to the wave narrative and its relationship with feelings lacks
the empiricism that comes with brain scans or biological study. I am not
focusing on the way that sexism might manifest within the brain in the
form of affects, nor am I considering the embodied responses to living
under the patriarchy. As such, my form of working with affect lacks
empiricism. However, it seems necessary to attempt an engagement with
the contemporary as it unfolds, making a case for affects that themselves
still seem to be in process. In a 1994 interview with Butler, Braidotti
stated that the problem of European Higher Education was its ‘delayed
relation of theory to practice . . . thinking the present is always the most
difficult task’ (39). Here, through addressing temporality and affect,
before turning to the fourth-wave moment, I am attempting to articulate
the contemporary in ways that allow for its uncertainty and obscurity.
This uncertainty echoes the fact that this analysis is not empirical, but
rather description and extrapolation.
Another difficulty of working with affect is that feminism has a
history of being silenced through the accusation of too much feeling.
There is a strong history of women being associated with hysteria, over-
zealousness in feeling and a too-extreme sensitivity (Tomlinson 2010).
The dismissal of feminist activism and thought on account of it being
too emotionally driven has a bearing on the way I am discussing affect
here. It is apparent, still, that feminism is associated with being hyster-
ical, indignant or irrationally angry. David Cameron’s 2011 ‘calm down,
dear’ to a female opposition in the House of Commons seems to be very
much symptomatic of the way in which feminist passion or candour is
received.2 This reception of feminism seems to return me once more to
the problem of the descriptive and the empirical. In spite of the number
of statistics, feminist organisations produce to support their campaigns
and activism, demonstrations of feeling can still be wielded against them,
as if it undermines the truth in some way. Feeling that inevitably arises
from campaigning becomes a demonstration of irrationality, and there-
fore a lack of credibility. If feminists are not able to maintain a cold
indifference, they can appear as incapable of sustaining activist organisa-
tions. Or, even worse, that they are overstating the case on account of
being so emotionally affected by the cause. Working with affect in
relation to feminist movements raises the possibility of waves being
elided with forms of mass hysteria. Indeed, such conflations have hap-
pened before, with writers like Katie Roiphe viewing increases in rape
prevention measures on campus as demonstrative of an epidemic of
infectious and disproportionate panic (1994). Ahmed writes against
2
In 2011, David Cameron told Labour MP Angela Eagle to ‘calm down, dear’ in a debate The
House of Commons.
the difficulty of pitting the empirical against the emotional, stating that
we need to stop justifying feminism through rationality. Instead, we
should contest the idea that emotion is lacking in criticality or objectiv-
ity. She writes that ‘the response to the dismissal of feminists as emo-
tional should not then be to claim that feminism is rational . . . Instead,
we need to contest this understanding of emotion as “unthought”’
(2004: 170).
Prioritising feeling as a form of political engagement and action
salvages it from being dismissed as an irrational response. Political
stimulus inevitably catalyses an emotional reaction: a subject will argu-
ably feel when confronted with inequality or sexism. In fact, feeling and
responding might be vital to galvanising individual subjects in their
attachment to politics. Additionally, feeling will also work to secure a
sense of solidarity, in which a number of feminists are united through
their responses to an inequality. Although ‘feeling’ has been denigrated
in order to silence women, attributing feminists with both irrational
anger and over-sensitivity, Ahmed is right in stating that the emotion–
thought binary needs to be destabilised. Emotion and the thinking it
produces, even emotion as a form of thinking itself, is intrinsic to
creating an affect that sustains feminist communities and activisms.
Furthermore, etymologically, emotion derives from the Latin ‘e’ and
‘movere’, which mean ‘out’ and ‘move’ respectively (Oxford English
Dictionary 2017). Much like affect is concerned with mobility, move-
ment and passages, emotion requires the political subject to move
beyond themselves. Whilst the feelings might initially be experienced
internally, their very presence forces the subject to move the sensation
outwards for external realisation. The fact that externalisation is built
into the word ‘emotion’ itself aligns it with affect. The outward quality
implied by emotion connotes action and movement, creating a strong
basis for politics and social movements.
The final difficulty of working with affect and feminism is that there
will be significant differences between the feelings within the social
movement in contrast with the feelings without it. While feminism
might find that it is easy to shore up the affective boundaries between
itself and a wider social context, it is not necessarily as easy to reconcile
different affective charges within feminism itself. Thus, while feminism
as a whole might stick to specific affects that are useful for creating
passages of force within the cultural, social and political constellation,
there are affects within feminism that might challenge the coherence of
the group as a whole. It seems that this work with negative affect is
inevitable: feminism itself is borne of a multitude of negative affects,
created by the feelings that arise from living under patriarchy.
Unsurprisingly then, many women are moved to feminism through
negative affect, whether that is anger at everyday sexism, disaffection
over a lack of progress, or the inevitable sadness that accompanies
ongoing inequality. Ahmed writes that ‘feminist subjects might bring
others down not only by talking about unhappy topics such as sexism
but by exposing how happiness is sustained by erasing the very signs of
not getting along’ (POH: loc.940) It is not necessary for there to be a
positive feeling for a group to feel an affective bind. In fact, it is the
combination of a range of affects that creates an affective environment to
which feminist subjects can adhere. This multiplicity also ensures that
there is greater inclusivity within feminism itself, acknowledging that
different feminists will feel differently given their unique experiences and
backgrounds.
Affects can also cause difficulty within feminism as a category.
Feminism has a history of both LGBT and racial problems, in which
the politics is neither as intersectional nor as progressive as it should be
(Calhoun 2003; Nash 2008). Certain bodies are encoded as affectively
difficult: the female is over-emotional, the black body is immediately
aggressive and, more recently, the Middle Eastern body is imbued with a
hatred of the West (Ahmed 2004). Writing specifically about women of
colour’s bodies within feminism, Ahmed suggests that criticism is often
interpreted as anger, as opposed to rational critique. She writes that
‘reasonable thoughtful arguments are dismissed as anger . . . which makes
you angry, such that your response becomes read as the confirmation of
evidence that you are not only angry but also unreasonable’ (2004,
loc.973). Feminism, then, is not immune to the pitfalls of feeling and
affect: in the first sense, negative affects about a lack of representation
can proliferate within feminism; in the second, other feminists might
attempt to silence such criticism through positioning the speakers as
unreasonable and angry. Anger does not blunt criticality, but rather,
might be a necessary response in both recognising a problem, and

demanding its remedy. That certain bodies are perceived as inherently
negative or associated with a specific form of feeling, can easily create
division within social movements, leading to post-rationalisation of the
limitations of specific waves.
Affective Temporality
Previously, I addressed the notion of the contemporary from a time-
keeping perspective. I now want to tease out the relationship this can
have with affect, thus establishing my understanding of the affective
temporality. Agamben outlines his contemporary subject as one that
does not entirely coincide with her own time: she is not firmly located or
situated within the present moment. I have extended this to feminism in
that, while it might respond to the immediacy of particular events, it is
still doing so while maintaining the past and the future aspirations. This
speaks to the in-between-ness that Gregg and Seigworthy associate with
affect. Affect exists within a space of uncertainty, being comprised of
force and surges as opposed to clearly outlined. Both in the contempor-
ary and with affect, there is an emphasis on liminality, where the
convergences and contingencies begin to take shape. It also relates to
the way in which affect is about movement, without a predetermined
destination, in the same way that feminist time (until it is resolved in
termination) does not exist purely in an unfolding and linear sense.
It is useful at this point to return to the concept of ‘becoming’, which
I first addressed in relation to Walker’s ‘Becoming Third Wave’ (1992).
This process is important on account of its liminality: becoming suggests
the movement required in order to reach a final destination. It evades the
definitive end point of ‘being’ while engaging with ideas of synthesis,
adaptability, development and change. This movement and process
allow for malleability, which could be stifled or prevented by the
invocation of a set identity. In this sense, becoming reflects the con-
temporary’s relationship to time: it is determined by a set of shifting
variables that make its immediate moment difficult to perceive. In
becoming, it is only possible to narrate the process, as opposed to
defining the moment in a way that is fixed or certain. The liminality of

becoming, in conjunction with the imperceptibility of the contempor-
ary, speaks to the way that political waves take shape and develop.
Although some of the waves are self-declared, like Walker making a
statement for the third wave (1992), and Cochrane establishing an
argument for the fourth wave (2014), such titling does not fix the
movements in place. Rather, it creates a sense of the contemporary,
understood as a feeling moment in which the nascent wave can develop
around a number of contingencies. When the wave is declared, it is not
necessarily established, but is recognised as becoming; composed of past,
present, future, activisms and academia, as well as the affective surges
that drive it. While we might retrospectively understand waves as
characterised by certain methods, or types of activism, or even person-
ality types, within the contemporary the waves are both liminal and
mutable. The affective temporality of each wave can grow and change in
relation to the affects both within and without feminism, placing them
in a continual form of becoming.
The fact that the waves are open to affective change and influence, both
from feminism itself, and then from the cultural climate in which the
feminism is unfolding, speaks to the ‘stickiness’ of affect that Ahmed
defines. Stickiness means that the feelings both adhere individuals, and
then adhere these individuals to one another. In the next section of this
chapter, I will consider specifically how this adhesiveness might relate to
political subjects in feminism. However, in relation to the contemporary,
the stickiness of affect works as a kind of temporal adhesive in which the
feelings of the past, the feeling investment in the future, and the affects of
the unfolding moment all operate in dialogue with one another. The
history of feminism, as well as the way we measure progress by looking to
the past, visit on the feminist contemporary moment. Similarly, the
negative affects of backlashes after previous waves are present within the
contemporary, contributing to the bad feeling of the moment. This is
counterbalanced by the positive affects associated with futurity, the hope
and the belief that sustains feminism within each specific wave. Whilst the
fourth wave might not be the last, there is still a sense that each surge is an
affective investment in a future in which feminism is no longer necessary.
Thus, as well as adhering subjects together, affect works to stick
temporalities to one another, ensuring that the contemporary abounds not

just with tenses, but the affects that their presence inevitably carries.
I want, then, to think about the concept of force in relation to the wave
narrative. While Gregg and Seigworthy are eager to understand affect
through force and passage, this definition seems to relate very much to
the way we can understand individual waves. This is not to suggest that
feminism is not continually working, but that at times, in the affective
moments of waves, it takes on a particular force. The surging of the waves is
analogous to the creation of passages: it is the combination of new meth-
odologies, responsive types of activism, and the momentum carried through
feeling that makes each wave significantly different from the sea of femin-
ism. The waves are noticeable, and, in fact, have been addressed because
each one creates a passage through patriarchal society. The wave constitutes
a surge of energy, in which affects work in conjunction with one another to
galvanise increased action for an indefinite period of time. As with all forces,
the energy required to sustain it might eventually dissipate, particularly
when the affects no longer adhere to one another with the same strength. It
might even be the case that some of the affects disappear as particular
problems are addressed, fundamentally changing the way in which the wave
is formulating and operating. Inevitably, too, as with the blacklash that I
outlined in my chapter on temporalities, there will be a counterforce that
eventually refutes the velocity and strength of the wave. It is at that point
that the wave is no longer in existence, but has crashed back into the larger
ocean, returning its driving affects to a wider sea of feminist effort.
Sticking Together: Affective Temporalities and

Feminism
In addition to creating haptic temporalities through its adhesive quality,
affect could also affix political subjects to one another within one
forceful movement.
In her article, ‘Happy Objects’, Ahmed writes that affect is sticky, and
as such, ‘sustains or preserves the connection between ideas, values, and
objects’ (2010a: 29). This implies that affect forms collectives that are
driven to political action, sticking together in order to create a series of

relations and connections. The ideas, values and objects of feminism
adhere to one another, and in turn, require a certain form of adherence
from activists. This is not to say that these objects and ideas will not
change, but that the affects they invoke, work to stick feminist subjects
to the politics within specific feeling moments. Affect works as the
binding agent for discourse, values and the objectives of feminism,
placing the three in dialogue with one another. Brennan’s discussion of
affect posits ‘a theory of the group based on what is produced by the
“group”, as well as the individuals within it’ (2004: 51). The idea of
what the group produces is important to consider. It seems to speak to
the problematic of wave identities emerging. Certainly, if specific
groups within specific time periods seem to be producing affects that
can be easily understood and delineated, then these affects might come
to be representative of the group. By this, I mean that while the
identity of each wave seems to have been drawn relatively crudely,
these identities might have found their origins in the kind of affect
being produced by feminists within that moment of time. However,
affect, particularly in relation to social movements, is possibly not as
easy to pinpoint as the case studies to which Brennan turns. For
example, the affectivity of the football stadium hinges on one side
hoping that their team will win. These are offset by the opposition’s
identical investments, in which the space suddenly becomes filled by
two expanses of people hoping for the same outcome at the cost of the
others. The group constituted through a ‘feminist wave’ is not neces-
sarily as simply understood as the football supporters. Similarly, the
objects and values that affect sticks together are not all the same, or
even remotely uniform. Thus, in order to understand the sticky affects
of feminism, it is vital to recognise that difference is being stuck
together with particular force within a specific moment.
This said, Brennan does also state that her interest lies in the way
that the social might work to consolidate affects, even while she
recognises the role of the individual within groupings. She writes
that ‘the specific waves of affects generated by different cultural con-
stellations could lead to a different and altogether more interesting
characterisation of stable, as well as temporary, group phenomena’
(2004: 51). What is notable here is that Brennan draws on the term
‘wave’ to describe how affects might work to create groups that stabilise
for a finite period of time. Although her wave does not relate to
feminism, I am suggesting that this maps directly back onto my
thinking around feminist affects and activism. In the same way that
Brennan characterises affect as a wave, I am understanding waves as
affects, converging with force within a certain context. Brennan’s use of
cultural constellation speaks to the way I am addressing temporality,
acknowledging that chronological time does result in forms of pro-
gress, which, in turn, have an impact on the operations of feminist
time. The cultural constellation now, for example, is very heavily based
on social media; this does not undermine the presence of the past and
future within feminism, but it does suggest that the group phenomena
of the fourth wave affective temporality is conditioned in part by these
technological advances.
In An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public
Cultures, Cvetkovich looks to ACT UP as a protest movement. While
her initial focus is on creating an archive of lesbian experience from
within the movement, she goes on to consider trauma and activism,
arguing perhaps that mourning may actually be a form of radical action.
Although I will not be considering the concept of mourning in relation
to feminism, in part because I do not feel it is central to the affect of the
politics, I want to address some of the ways in which Cvetkovich
approaches ACT UP’s formulations.3 At this point, I also want to
recognise the significant differences between AIDS activism and what I
am identifying as waves or affective temporalities. In the case of AIDS
activism, there was a sense of limited time that far outstrips any urgency
within feminism. This is not to say that female deaths as a direct result of
male violence should not be addressed urgently, but that within ACT
3
Karen Ingala Smith, the CEO of a London-based domestic violence charity, set up ‘Counting
Dead Women’ to make a note of every woman who has been killed by a male relative, partner or
ex-partner in the UK since 2012: https://kareningalasmith.com/counting-dead-women/. Refuge,
which works with women and children, against domestic violence reports that 2 women a week
are killed by a current or former partner: http://www.refuge.org.uk/get-help-now/what-is-domes
tic-violence/domestic-violence-the-facts/. So, while mourning is not an affect central to contem-
porary feminism, there is a strong acknowledgement of the casualties of male violence.
UP’s affective temporality, there was a need for rapidity in conjunction

with the very rapid decline and death of a number of those who
contracted AIDS. The unprecedented death toll motivated the activists
into direct action that recognised their government was not doing
enough to treat the illness. Furthermore, ACT UP was formulated
around a shared queerness, which is not necessarily central to feminism.
Cvetkovich recognises in her work that a number of women came to the
movement because they were disillusioned and disaffected by a feminism
that had demonstrated itself to be anti-sex and, in many cases, homo-
phobic (2003). I am not including this criticism of feminism to pit the
two social movements against one another but to recognise that ACT
UP was not without its feminist affiliations and engagements, even if
they are problematic ones.
What is useful to draw from ACT UP, in its quick formulation and
the urgency of its activism, is that it was responding to a specific need
within a specific temporality. It emerged and came together with an
overwhelming intensity and then dissipated when the need was con-
sidered to be less urgent. ACT UP is not separable from a history of
LGBT campaigning, nor does it stand apart from a long history of
homophobia and discrimination. Rather, it constitutes a wave of
action, in which the cultural context and affective intensity ensured
that there was a responsive surge of activisms and action. Importantly,
Cvetkovich draws parallels between a past of homophobia and ACT
UP’s emergence, and feminism, writing on ‘insidious trauma’ which
recognises how ‘punctual’ events, such as rape, feed into a wider
culture of everyday experiences of sexism (2003: 163). This concept
of the ‘punctual’ is very useful for considering affective temporalities
within a wider sea of ongoing political struggle. The punctual could
refer to incidents of specific violence, especially in relation to feminism
and LGBT activism; the kind of violence that seems to puncture the
everyday microaggressions that can be overlooked or ignored.
Similarly, the punctual could relate to the affective temporality; it
punctuates the ongoing effort and struggles with an especially charged
and concentrated period of activism. The period is dictated by the
cultural context, including social and political change, as well as the
unique convergence of affects that such a context creates.
In an interview, Cvetkovich’s subject, Alexis Danzig, says that the

participants of ACT UP ‘came together in a certain moment and our
lives have changed significantly, and we’re no longer in each other’s
spheres. But the intensity was really intense’ (2003: 171). Cvetkovich
later comments that the transitory nature of this kind of force is ‘specific
to the context of activism, and in many cases their intensity could not be
sustained’ (2003: 174). In applying this back to the way I am under-
standing the waves, Cvetkovich’s work does offer a very useful inter-
pretation of the way that especially forceful surges of activism can occur
and then dissipate. As I have recognised, the unique cultural moment
that spawned ACT UP is vastly different from any experiences that have
shaped feminism. The suddenness and urgency of the AIDS crisis have
not been paralleled within the history of feminism. That established,
feminist waves emerge at specific moments, but do not negate the past of
the social movement, nor attempt to detract from the futurity of it.
When feminist waves occur, they happen in response to a specific
cultural context, creating a forceful intensity. This level of intensity
cannot always be sustained. Indeed, Cvetkovich’s interview subjects
admit that their period of activism was characterised by extraordinarily
energised efforts: it is inevitable, then, that activists will burn out just as
much as affects might begin to change. As Danzig recognises, there is a
period of cohering, and then when the intensity can no longer be
sustained, the subjects move out of one another’s spheres. As I have
stated, feminism is formulated slightly differently, in that the social
movement has not experienced a sudden and unprecedented epidemic
resulting in mass death. Rather, there is the difficult sense that feminism
is combatting everyday experiences and affects, as well as larger and more
systemic problems. If sexism and misogyny are both historically and
systemically entrenched, then it becomes increasingly difficult to identify
moments that constitute a flare up of engagement and develop into a
wave of activism. In spite of this, and in spite of feminism’s continued
efforts against patriarchy, there is a reliance on the idea of waves of
action. The wave, then, like ACT UP, might respond to a specific
context emerging from a specific temporality, although it will perhaps
be less marked and drastic than that of the AIDS activism. It might
purely be the case that a few campaigns gain momentum within a similar
time frame, and, in so doing, initiate the starting ripples of a much more
forceful wave. What ACT UP does demonstrate is that even when the
cost is high and the risks enormous, activism cannot be sustained
indefinitely. In fact, it might even be the intensity of the initial surge
that makes energy hard to sustain. This seems, to me, to answer the
questions of how and why waves occur, and also, why new waves are
inevitable. Moments of social movements and politics carry intensity,
one that fuels uncertainty, draws from feeling, and adheres people to one
another. However, this intensity might have an ephemeral quality,
creating cohesiveness through the forceful affects of a specific moment.
Even slight changes in circumstances are enough to cause the wave
to crash earlier than anticipated, with affects altering or diminishing
over time.
It is my contention that reconceiving a wave as an affective tempor-
ality is useful for a number of reasons. Eliding the wave with affective
intensity and force moves us away from universal wave identities, as well
as the suggestion that waves are the only time in which feminism is
taking shape or having an impact. Writing against identity seems espe-
cially important for the fourth-wave moment, which has seen an inflam-
mation of the ongoing debate about women-born-women and
transwomen. It is also necessary to counter the idea that waves are
dominated by educated white women, who have large media platforms.
It is important that identity is not the sole basis for solidarity, as it
emphasises difference, rather than maintaining openness and dialogue.
This is not to suggest that identity politics do not play a part within
feminism. Nor is it to suggest that some problematics of identity can be
overlooked; it is perhaps only from a position of privilege that one can
disavow the politics of identity, suggesting that they no longer have
purchase on the way that communities or social movements are formed.
Instead, I am suggesting that by dismissing a wave ‘identity’ we are in
fact allowing for new forms of solidarity to emerge, ones that are much
more concerned with different affects coming together, as opposed to
different people.
Denise Riley writes that ‘identity is not the same as solidarity’ (2000:
133), which suggests that the former does not lead to the latter. Shared
identifications do not necessarily mean that investments, directions and
politics will be shared. Instead, solidarity speaks to the affective stickiness

of feminist waves, allowing for a cohering together for a finite period of
time. Cvetkovich, in turn, states that affect works as a ‘motivational
system and as the ground for forging new collectivities’ (2003: 12).
Similar to Riley, Cvetkovich is considering how affect might work
against assumptions about essentialist identity, or the necessity of shared
identity in order to create forceful political movements. Instead, what is
fundamental is a sense of solidarity fostered by collectives that emerge
from specific affects. The affective investments of individual subjects, as
well as the wider feeling that this creates, are what allow for the feminist
waves to accumulate and surge. Love makes a similar assertion to that of
Cvetkovich when she writes that she understands community as not
‘constituted by a shared set of identity traits, but rather as emerging from
shared experience of social violence’ (2003: 51). Evidently, here, Love is
speaking about specific kinds of communities that emerge in relation to
social activism. Not all communities are formulated around experiences
of violence, and the negative affects associated with them.
This concept is useful in relation to feminism. While I hesitate to
understand feminism as a community, it’s important to understand
Love’s formulation as speaking against identity-predicated convergences.
Instead, she suggests that such convergences of affects and people are
actually based on shared experience, an occupying of common ground.
While it is important to avoid feminism being positioned as a politics of
victimhood or continual suffering, ongoing discrimination on the basis
of sex and gender is a form of social violence. Indeed, in 2013, the
World Health Organisation declared violence against women as an
epidemic (WHO 2013). While this violence inevitably manifests in
different ways depending on the social and cultural contexts of different
nations and communities, there is still a recognition that women experi-
ence violence across the globe. The movement away from collectives,
and here especially, feminist waves, determined by shared characteristics,
to those formed by shared feeling, creates a feminism that is adaptable.
This allows for experience, emotional investment and affective stickiness
to bring feminists together. That kind of formation negates similarities
or sameness, which are almost impossible within a feminism that
encourages intersectionality and multiplicity.
While I have been writing against identity in feminism, I have

continued to ascribe the politics with an investment in the identity of
‘woman’. I want to address my attachment to this identity category to
think about the implications of its use in relation to feminist waves,
which I have suggested, should not be identity predicated. Riley writes
that ‘woman’ itself is a problematic term: ‘feminism must negotiate the
quicksands of “women” which will not allow it to settle on either
identities or counter-identities, but which condemn it to an incessant
striving for a brief foothold’ (1988: 5). How then can we reconcile the
problematic of ‘woman’ with the fact that feminism as a politics and
social movement is reliant on it as a category of identification? It is my
contention that ‘woman’ in this sense is constructed. This is not to
engage with arguments of constructivism or essentialism in relation to
gendered identity, but to suggest that feminism is required to engage
with the way in which society, the economy and our politics are con-
structing what it means to be a woman. The experiences of these
constructions will be different depending on other identity qualifiers,
similarly socially constructed; so, for example, a queer woman, or a
woman of colour, will experience the world differently from that of
straight women or white women. What matters is not that these women
experience the world differently, but that they are constructed to be
treated as different by a society that prioritises some forms of identity
above others.
Riley elaborates on the difficulties of these proliferating identities
when she writes that ‘the cruel aspects of identities is their frustrated
promise of an identification of everyone; but while slots of possible
description may feverishly multiple, they still remain mass-produced
slots into which thousands, in their rare specificities, can never neatly
fit’ (2000: 132). Identity, then, does not serve to encompass all experi-
ence, and even as it multiplies into very precise specificities, there are still
gaps in which people find themselves without determined signifiers. I
would like to propose, then, that waves need to work against specific
identities to ensure that they remain open and affectively drive, as
opposed to hinging upon a certain, media prolific, type of identity.
This working against identity does not necessarily undermine that
feminism is engaged with women being granted the same rights as
men. It suggests, instead, that while women and men are culturally and
socially constructed as different from one another – in a way that
impacts directly upon experiences of violence, treatment within the
work place, and the traversing of everyday situations – feminism needs
to be concerned with the category of ‘woman’. Certainly, the category
itself is expansive, multiple and mutable, and feminism must acknowl-
edge this while attempting to create a society in which gender and sex as
social constructs do not result in a markedly different treatment. It is
important to be wary of the fact that ‘the mobilization of identity
categories for the purposes of politicization always remain threatened
by the prospect of identity becoming an instrument of the power one
opposes’ (Butler 2008: xxviii). In this sense, feminism needs to continue
to make use of the category of ‘woman’, while avoiding wielding it in the
same way as the wider society they are attempting to change. It is
perhaps feminism’s prerogative to continue to dismantle the term of
woman at the same time as addressing the inequalities associated with
such an identity category within a larger context.
It is necessary, then, to understand how solidarity might be
wielded in feminism without it depending on the rigidity of category
identities. It is perhaps most useful to see it through Ahmed’s
definition, as follows: ‘solidarity does not assume that our struggles
are the same struggles, or that our pain is the same pain, or that our
hope is for the same future . . . even if we do not have the same
feelings, or the same lives, or the same bodies, we do live on common
ground’ (Ahmed 2004: 189). While I am suggesting that affects are
shared, I am not contending that these arise from identical feelings
across the spectrum of feminism. Inevitably, different people and
different campaigns provoke a range of responses, all of which are
used to fuel the affect of the temporality. Thus, if the feelings of
individual subjects are not uniform, it does not preclude them from
participating within the extimacy of feminism, nor the affects pro-
duced by this unique moment. Ahmed’s consideration of the com-
mon ground is important in relation to spatiality and temporality, in
that within a certain area, at a certain time, it is possible that the
terrain is similarly experienced. Rather than focusing on uniformity,
Ahmed seems to believe that solidarity can be predicated on
difference. Through engaging with the affect of a specific moment,

there is a sense that the ground is shared, even if different forms of
feminism and feminists are required to traverse it differently.
I also want to suggest that each feminism wave is responding to a
specific need, as per the ACT UP movement discussed earlier. Again,
this is not identity predicated, but reading the way in which the social
context is necessitating increased activism around gender and sex
equality. The temporality of feminism complicates this concept of
need: the fact that feminism continues is indicative of the fact that it
is needed. How, then, might we differentiate between an ongoing need
and then a more acute and transitory need that constitutes a wave of
feminism? It might simply be the case that as certain affects and
campaigns combine, there is the creation of a unique feeling moment
in which the demands of feminism become more urgent. Alternatively,
it is possible that these combinations create affective ties with a wider
range of subjects, who begin to participate within the social movement,
thus adding to and sustaining its affect. Need, however, is different
from clearly outlined objectives, which it would seem are much harder
to orientate feminist waves around. Although waves have been under-
stood by their objectives being achieved, the first wave resulted in
women getting the vote, while the second wave resulted in sexual
liberation and increased employment rights, while the third wave
related to women in business and exploring online Utopian spaces,
there is a sense that the overriding objectives of feminism as a whole are
still unreached. Are we able, then, to say definitively that each wave has
been defined and orientated by its tangible objectives? Rather, it might
be that specific needs are identified, and in some cases fulfilled, and in
others addressed, but not fully resolved. The needs of feminism inevi-
tably change over time, particularly in regard to legislative change
versus initiating significant shifts in cultural attitudes. However, what
seems to resonate with all of the waves is that each one signals a
temporality in which the affects capitalised on, and engaged with, a
form of need. This did not necessarily inflame the need, turning
feminism itself into a ‘needy’ social movement, but rather ensured
that there was a sense of timeliness and urgency that facilitated affects
binding to one another for a period of time.
This timeliness and urgency speak back to the idea that feminism is
‘needed’. As my chapter on temporality establishes, feminism is a politics
that desires its own end point. Once it has achieved its aims of total
equality, the world will no longer require feminism. That the politics is
still needed, then, suggests feminism’s relationship with temporality is
inextricably linked: it was necessary in the past, required with a surging
intensity within this contemporary, and will be needed in the future.
The quality of being needed that formulates each wave-based feeling
moment is reflected in the campaigns and forms of activism that emerge
within that time. As I will explore in greater depth in my next chapter,
this fourth-wave moment is becoming through a series of different
affects and a range of needs. This economic moment is especially
pressing, with women’s services experiencing unprecedented cuts within
austerity Britain. This environment, in conjunction with the wide reach-
ing lure of social media, is responding to the needing moment of fourth-
wave feminism. Orientated by similar issues, such as the cuts, and
adhering around specific campaigns and organisations, such as No
More Page 3 and Daughters of Eve, feminists are being directed through
the converging affects of the contemporary.4
In the togetherness of this particular feeling moment, there is a more
continual critique of the wider society, in the same way that internal
difficulties are brought to the fore. The internal difficulties, while often
perceived as divisive, are actually of continual use to feminism, ensuring
development and discussion. When there is a less intensive focus on
waves or affective temporalities of activism, then it is less likely that
different forms of feminism will be placed in dialogue with each other.
When they are forced to co-exist in a temporality of particular affective
intensity, there is a sense that internal differences will become particu-
larly evident. It is perhaps for this reason that each wave has been
4
Austerity cuts under the conservative government in the UK have led to the closure of a number
of women’s organisations, including rape crisis, which I explore in Chapter 5. In the midst of these
austerity measures, No More Page 3 are an organisation that are attempting to put an end to the
topless pictures of women included in the Sun, a mainstream newspaper. Daughters of Eve, in
contrast, are considering ways to end FGM within the UK, looking to introduce new legislation
and innovate social services’ approach to the issue.
accompanied by an ongoing commentary of its division, infighting and

exclusivity.5 I would contend, however, that rather than feminism
creating splits and divisions, this kind of difficulty is especially useful
when considering the politics’ futurity. As I have stated previously,
feminism does not purely operate on positive affects and good feelings.
The social movement does not just thrive on solidarity, closeness, the
intimacy made public, and the hopefulness associated with transforma-
tive politics. Instead, there are negative affects such as anger, frustration
and disappointment, all of which are similarly intensified within the
affective temporality. The surging forcefulness of the social movement is
not just associated with an outward-looking strength, but also applicable
to the feeling within feminism, which is not uniformly positive.
Ahmed states that ‘to be recognized as a feminist is to be assigned to a
difficult category and a category of difficulty’ (2010b: loc.918). The
duality here is central to the use of negative affects within feminism.
Feminism, as a politics and social movement, is seen as a difficult
category in that it refuses to align with society as a whole. It protests
economic and political discrepancies, at the same time that it challenges
prevailing cultural assumptions; in short, it aims at a total upheaval in
the name of future transformation. Feminism is also a category of
difficulty in that it challenges normativity and prevailing culture. It
refuses to align with the easy, happy complacency that accompanies
going along with patriarchy, and, instead, attempts various forms of
resistance. However, it is also difficult on account of the diversity of
these forms of activism; there is no single feminist strategy, no area
prioritised above others, and no definitive feminist identity to which
subjects can conform. As such, feminism is a difficult category. Even
when one participates within it, there is a sense that the category is
porous and mutable in a way that does not allow for total certainty.
5
In-fighting within feminism has been reported by all major media in articles such as ‘The
Incomplete Guide to Feminist Infighting’ published by The Wire, January 2014; ‘Feminist
infighting only takes our eyes off the real struggle’ in The Guardian, February 2014; ‘London is
still ablaze with feminist fire, but is infighting stifling the debate’ in The Standard, October 2015;
‘International Women’s Day 2015: Feminism contains infighting but the point is we have a voice’
in IB Times, March 2015. These are just some examples of the media reporting on fighting within
feminism.
Similarly, within feminism, there is no sense of ongoing ease or comfort.

There is difficulty from inside the social movement, in that there are
regular critiques, voices of dissent, differences of opinions, debate and
intersectional politics at work. Feminism, therefore, embodies a kind of
difficulty, in that both outwardly and inwardly, it does not line up with
wider society, nor does it attempt uniform positive affects within.
Ahmed writes that ‘this discomfort . . . means “not sinking” into the
spaces in which we live and work, and it means always questioning
our own investments’ (2004: 178). It is necessary for feminism to avoid
a sense of comfort, combining both negative and positive affects, so that
there is a sense of internal development. Sinking too deeply into the
politics, as if it can provide us with a secure home, ensures that there is
no critique and no debate. Both are integral to development, improve-
ment and strengthening, as well as the recognition that some feminists
occupy positions of greater privileges than others.
Conclusion
This section of the book has been addressing the way that affective
temporalities are especially suited to the concept of the wave within
feminism. In writing against objectives and identity, I have attempted to
express how the social movement is adaptable and changeable, even
within galvanised moments of action. Rather than attempting an essen-
tialist understanding of waves, an aim that – to me – seems contrary to
feminist thought and investments, the waves should be considered in a
more mutable and affective sense. Through attributing feminist tempor-
alities with affect, it becomes evident how subjects stick to one another
through the transformation of personal feeling into something that can
cohere within more sociable and public realms. The uncertainty of both
temporality and affect goes some way to remedy the divisive ways in
which waves have previously been understood. They cannot simply be
attributed a generational timeframe, nor can they relate to a specific kind
of woman; instead, they are reliant on unique cultural constellations,
including political and economic influences, creating an affective surge
of feminist activism. It is the force with which affects move that allows
for feminists to be galvanised in moments of perceived intense action.

The fact that affects and their intensity can be subject to change does not
undermine feminism, but, rather, allows for the emergence and dissipa-
tion of waves, without signalling a failure of the politics as a whole.
I have tried not to overlook the complexities that come with
approaching feminism from an affective perspective. I have recognised
that affect itself is subject to change: it is used differently across a wide
range of disciplines, some of which are reliant on empirical evidence,
whilst others are defined more in terms of observation and abstraction.
Furthermore, affect’s relationship with emotion and feeling is a proble-
matic one, in that the latter two are mostly considered to be internalised
and highly subjective, as opposed to outward looking and collective. I
have considered the way that individual feeling might translate into a
wider affective temporality, inciting subjects to participate in activism
that is characterised by much wider spreading affects than a person can
withstand alone. Interestingly, too, is that emotion, in spite of its
apparent relationship with the individual and self, is highly preoccupied
with movement. Much like affect, which is understood through forces
and surges of mobility, emotion requires that feeling moves outward;
that feeling itself will begin to circulate in a dialogue with a wider, and
public, world.
Affect is sticky, both in the sense that it adheres people into cohesive
movements and in that it creates a continual difficulty. Affective
trouble lies not only in the way it has been dismissed as ‘too feeling’
and therefore ‘too feminine’, but also in that affects are not always
positive. An affective temporality is not sustained because affective
investments align neatly with one another, but rather that contending
and complementary affects convene within a specific moment to create
a sense of urgency and force. This means, then, that within feminism
itself, there can be a range of diverse affects that influence the shape
that the social movement takes. Ongoing affective discomfort must be
practised within feminism and can often work as fuel for the move-
ment, spurning internal improvement, alongside the ongoing attempts
to achieve social change. Sometimes, it is possible that these internal
affects will take precedence, leading to a period of introspection and
ongoing discussion. The unpredictability of affects becomes central
again, in that what might work as glue within a certain time period
might be divisive within another.
This leads me, ultimately, to a consideration of the fourth wave of
feminism. My contention throughout the book until this point has been
that I do not want to define this particular moment of affective femin-
ism. Indeed, my work on temporality and exploration of affect have both
suggested that the work I will do on the fourth wave in the next chapter
thrives on a sense of uncertainty and in-between-ness. I recognise that
the fourth wave, in spite of the recent proliferation of its term in activism
and academic usage, is still nascent. It does not have an obvious or
evident identity nor any clear objectives. Furthermore, it is almost
impossible to date the point at which it began, with different theorists
claiming some moments as significant, while others overlook them
entirely. As such, my next chapter will focus on five events within the
fourth-wave feminist movement, considering how they offer insight into
the types of affect that are emerging. Each one demonstrates the ways the
personal and feeling can become outward facing, contributing to a sense
of momentum and force. This said, I am still resistant to naming the
affective charge of the fourth wave, choosing instead to leave it open and
uncertain. As this chapter testifies, it is difficult, if not impossible, to
predict the shape that affects will take as they converge, as well as the
amount of time for which they will be able to sustain the intensity.
References
Ahmed, Sara (2004) The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.
Ahmed, Sara (2010a) ‘Happy Objects’ The Affect Theory Reader, eds. Melissa Gregg
and Gregory J. Seigworthy. London: Duke University Press. pp. 29–51.
Ahmed, Sara (2010b) The Promise of Happiness. London: Duke University Press.
Brian Massumi, (1987) ‘Introduction’ A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia ed. Gilles Deleuze and Feli Guattari. London: University of
Minnesota Press.
Brennan, Teresa (2004) The Transmission of Affect. London: Cornell University
Press.
Butler, Judith (2008) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.
Oxon: Routledge.
Calhoun, Cheshire (2003) Feminism, the Family, and the Politics of the Closet:
Lesbian and Gay Displacement. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Feli (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia London: University of Minnesota Press.
Fraser, Kathleen (2007) Ordinary Affects. Durham: Duke University Press.
Gregg, Melissa and Gregory J. Seigworthy., eds (2010) The Affect Theory
Reader. London: Duke University Press.
Nash, Jennifer, ‘Re-thinking Intersectionality’ Feminist Review Vol. 89, No. 1
(June 2008), pp. 1–15.
Roiphe, Katie (1994) The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism. New York:
Little, Brown.
Riley, Denise (1988) “Am I That Name?”: Feminism and the Category of Women
in History. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Thrift, Nigel (2010) ‘Understanding the Material Practices of Glamour’ The
Affect Reader eds. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth. pp. 289–308.
Tomlinson, Barbara (2010) Feminism and Affect at the Scene of Argument:
Beyond the Trope of the Angry Feminist. Philadelphia: Temple University
Press
Walker, Rebecca ‘Becoming Third Wave’ Ms. Magazine (January 1992)
pp. 39–41.
“wave, n.”. OED Online. March 2017. Oxford University Press. http://www.
oed.com/view/Entry/226383?rskey=KyZjMT&result=1. Accessed March
30, 2017.
Wetherall, Margaret (2012) Affect and Emotion. London: SAGE Publications.
World Health Organisation (2013) Global and Regional Estimates of Violence
Against Women: Prevalence and Health Effects of Intimate Partner Violence
and Non-Partner Sexual Violence. Geneva: WHO, Report no. HV 6625.
5
Why Fourth Wave Now?
Having established the wave as an affective temporality, I want to make a

case for fourth wave feminism emerging in contemporary British society.
Using both affect and the contemporary, I intend to avoid over-deter-
mination and instead, focus on in-between-ness, uncertainty and the
surging of forces. In addressing this most recent wave, there is a sense of
continuity as opposed to division, thinking how discourses and contexts
have changed such that a new surge in activity has been provoked. The
majority of my examples within this chapter focus on the use of
technology. While social media is not at the centre of all fourth wave
activism, it has transformed dissemination and participation such that
the cultural context is significantly different from that of ten years ago.
The speed facilitated by online activism is central to considering this
affective moment that I am identifying as fourth wave. The possibilities
afforded by speed of communication have led to new forms of collective
feelings, and by extension, modes of operating. Protests can be organised
through a series of clicks and supported with information on a supple-
mentary Facebook page. Online petitions ensure that access to protest
has become easier; for example, disabled feminists who may previously
have found participation difficult can contribute voices and names to

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53682-8_5
central issues (Ellis et al. 2015). Furthermore, the Internet has allowed
charities to find new fundraising forums; petitions to be circulated with
greater speed; and dialogue between feminists and anti-feminists to exist
in a space that does not entail bodily presence. The speed of the Internet
has also changed the scope of feminism, where we can be made aware of
global issues very quickly. Stories that might previously have been place-
specific become international, which was demonstrated particularly by
the vicious rape of a young woman in India, that ultimately led to her
death, and the rape of a girl by two football players in the American
town of Steubenville.1 In fact, it was an online group, Anonymous, that
was able to offer compelling evidence in the latter’s case, by retrieving
deleted photos that had originally been posted online.2 This is not to say
that both cases have not been problematic. Certainly, the former
spawned a series of articles and a documentary in the UK on India’s
rape problem. Not only did these pieces overlook the UK’s own pro-
blems with sexual violence, it took on an imperialist tone in terms of
standing in moral judgement of a non-Western country.3 In spite of
this, it was quite apparent that Internet outrage was central to the world
knowing of both local incidents.
The international outrage caused by these incidents, as well as the
activisms of this current moment, are all linked to forms of feeling,
engaged with public emotion, creating a certain affect that is unique to
contemporary feminism. The presence and all-pervasiveness of
1
Steubenville was a particularly famous rape case, in which two young athletes carried an
unconscious girl between parties, sexually assaulting her as their peers and friends filmed and
photographed it. Their high school and local community defended the boys, due to their athletic
records and places on the football team. Laurie Penny, ‘Steubenville: this is rape culture’s Abu
Ghraib moment’ in The New Statesman (19 March 2013) < http://www.newstatesman.com/
laurie-penny/2013/03/steubenville-rape-cultures-abu-ghraib-moment> [Accessed: 30 November
2013].
2
Tara Culp-Ressler, ‘Hacker who Exposed Stuebenville Rape Case Could Spend More Time
Behind Bars than Rapists’ in Think Progress (7 June 2013) <http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/
06/07/2119171/anonymous-hacker-steubenville-jail/> [Accessed: 30 November 2013].
3
The BBC created a documentary called ‘India’s Daughter’, which conducted interviews with
those who had been found guilty of the gang rape. The documentary itself was banned in India
and there was a significant amount of criticism about the piece itself, in that it focused purely on
women as ‘daughters’ as opposed to addressing wider systemic problems: http://www.theatlantic.
com/international/archive/2015/03/i-am-not-indias-daughter/387574/.
technology, is not purely a means to an end in terms of communication,

but is creating new ways in which feminists can document, organise
and engage in a dialogue with any arising backlash. Entertaining
uncertainty has been central to my argument: as my last chapter
established, affects are more concerned with the movement of emotion
than a specificity of feeling. Rather than proposing well-defined affects,
then, I will be looking at the Internet as a facilitator of immediacy and
speed in order to consider the impact that it might have on the way
collective feelings are taking shape. As mentioned in my introduction,
the methodology for this chapter is intended not to present an exhaus-
tive version of fourth wave feminism. Indeed, such a prescriptive and
closed approach to the subject matter would be contributing to the
problem of the wave narratives. This chapter will also avoid suggesting
a starting time for the fourth wave, and will not predict an ending
point; both engagements with calendar time would be too difficult in
the obscurity of the unfolding activism. Instead, this chapter will look
to five UK-based case studies, considering how each one might be
representative of an affect that is central to the currently obscure fourth
wave feminism.
International Slut Walk

The feminist tenet that the ‘personal is political’ has long been estab-
lished as a central aspect of the politics (Hanisch 2009). Feminism is
concerned with the way patriarchal societies inevitably have an impact
on the personal lives of women and men. Similarly, the personal experi-
ences of women constitute a large part of the politics of feminism.
Regular street harassment, albeit in a public space, happens to indivi-
duals: it is located within the realm of the personal. Even if it is an
endemic social problem, the embodied experience is one that unfolds
quite individually, with a whole range of unique incidents and out-
comes. One of the positives – and potentially, negatives – of an Internet
and social media age, is that there is the real possibility of the personal
becoming political at an incredible pace. Whereas previously, personal
experience might have informed the way one engaged with the world;
the ways one was required to speak to law enforcers, or, even the ways
one formed feminist communities through shared experience; there was
little danger of personal experience becoming a platform for debate
within the space of a few hours.
Over the last few years, there have been a number of incidents that
have become international news with great rapidity. While I will make
reference to a number of cases here, my primary focus in this section
will be on the Slut Walk. I will focus on the walk as a viral protest
movement that was catalysed by a single, and quite personal incident,
as well as discussing some of the more problematic aspects of the
march. It is my contention that the fourth wave has seriously inflamed
individual occurrences such that they become representative of wider-
reaching problems. It also demonstrates that this fourth wave moment
is demanding accountability and response from those who think that
individual incidents do not ultimately contribute to the drip-drip effect
of ongoing sexism. The case of a rape in Steubenville showed ‘the
personal is political’ playing out on the Internet and social media.
While I will be suggesting that the Slut Walk was primarily concerned
with international links and the empowerment of victims of sexual
violence, the Internet has similarly been used as a means by which to
humiliate and intimidate women on an individual level. It is also
important to acknowledge that Steubenville is an American case, but
one that is certainly applicable to a UK context, a concept that I will
return to. Steubenville is particularly worthy of note because the sexual
assault was not just perpetrated over one evening, but documented on
smart phones, and uploaded to a variety of social media websites. As a
result, when the victim came forward and the perpetrators were
charged, the latter had left a significant online footprint of their
ongoing sexual assault of an unconscious girl. Thus, it is not actually
the case that a feminist reaction against the perpetrators ignited the
Internet, but rather, that the guilty football players used the Internet to
document their crime, humiliate the girl in question, and then ulti-
mately, to implicate themselves. This case demonstrates particularly,
that the personal becomes political because the personal can so quickly
escalate within an Internet space. This has become evident through
phenomenon such as revenge porn, of which the majority of victims
are women.4 There is an ongoing attempt to humiliate women through

ensuring that their personal lives, sex lives and naked bodies, are
disseminated via the Internet. It is a time in which the personal is
inevitably politicised by the way in which privacy is being compro-
mised through continual use of social media websites.
The Slut Walk, in contrast, was formulated quite differently, but
nonetheless, stemmed from a single moment that was exacerbated,
increased and inflamed by the Internet. On a Canadian campus, giving
a talk on how best to deal with safety, a police officer informed students
that if they did not want to get raped, they should not dress like sluts.
Other than this being an ill-informed piece of advice, in part because the
majority of rapes are committed by people that the victim knows, in
spite of what they might be wearing, it also feeds into a much wider and
more insidious victim blaming culture.5 The police officer was not
offering useful advice, but making evident to those listening, that
women are accountable for their own sexual assault. As opposed to
discussing the problems of sexual assault, and targeting men on campus,
teaching them about consent, the officer’s main concern was to police
women’s clothing. The implication, here, is that a woman’s clothing is
the sole cause of sexual assault, and thus, the crime is entirely avoidable if
only the victim were wearing something demurer or less revealing.6
Understandably, the students listening were outraged by the police
officer’s comments, and immediately established a ‘slut walk’. The
march itself invited participants of any sex or gender identification to
take to the streets, wearing whatever they wished, however mundane or
however shocking. The range of identities, as well as the range of clothes,
4
A press release from the Government Equalities Office in 2015 indicates that 75% of the victims
of revenge porn seeking legal advice and aid are women: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/
hundreds-of-victims-of-revenge-porn-seek-support-from-helpline
5
Rape Crisis states that approximately 90% of rape victims know the perpetrator. This goes some
way to debunk the idea that a woman dressed provocatively in a public place will be more likely to
receive unwanted sexual attention. The fact that the overwhelming majority of victims know the
perpetrator suggests that rape itself is far more complex than the repercussions of a revealing outfit.
6
In this chapter, I have chosen to use the word ‘victim’ instead of ‘survivor’. This relates to the fact
that I am discussing rape as a crime, of which there are victims. Rather than drawing on discourses
of empowerment, which are very necessary in relation to sexual assault, I am focusing purely on
the criminal and legal aspects of rape.
was intended to signify the way rape culture manifests. It is not purely
attributable to a short skirt on a night out, but instead is an endemic
problem that impacts on a far wider range of people than one
might expect.
The march and the rapidity with which it was organised captured
international attention, and within a number of weeks, similar marches
were being organised across the globe. In the UK, thousands of women
participated in the first incarnation of the Slut Walk. What is especially
notable about the way this march manifested in the UK, is that it
constituted a space that comprised a total multiplicity of people. There
was no heterogeneous marcher, but male allies, women who were wear-
ing very little, alongside people carrying signs conveying that their more
modest clothes were what they had been wearing when they were
sexually assaulted. This march, then, raised interesting questions about
the feminist movement being organised around an issue as opposed to
an identity. The multiplicity embodied by the marchers served to undo
any essentialist identities, both in terms of the feminist protestor, but
perhaps more importantly, in relation to the word ‘slut’. What is
significant here, is that the signifier ‘slut’ was exploded. In its initial
usage by the police officer, slut was conflated with victims of sexual
assault or rape. In part because of his sentence’s construction, and in part
through propagating female culpability within rape, the police officer
was suggesting that slut was in some way analogous to a victim of sexual
assault. The marchers, however, contested this easy conflation by all
adopting the mantle of slut within the protest moment.
The Slut Walk makes the signifier of ‘slut’ so multiple, different and
intersectional, that it can no longer be condensed to a certain type of
behaviour or way of dressing. Through displacing the signifier, or at least
making it representative of a multitude of signified experiences, feminists
were able to contest the use of slut, and its centrality within the rape
culture. Unfortunately, it is still the case that women’s behaviour is
called into question when it comes to sexual assault accusations
(Harding 2015). Certainly, the conviction rate in conjunction with
the number of rape cases that reach trial, is testament to the fact that
sexual assault is still considered a crime with an expansive grey area of
ambiguity (Harding 2015). While the Slut Walk cannot necessarily
remedy this problem, it can address the way our law enforcement need
to use language that is more representative of women’s experience.
Furthermore, it suggests that there are no relationships between sexual
assault and what the woman was doing at the time: a short skirt, one
drink too many, sitting at home with a partner, in the marital bed. There
is no caveat, such as ‘dressing like a slut’, that negates the seriousness of
the crime of sexual assault, just as there is no relationship which gives the
perpetrator a right to their victim’s body.
So, how does this relate to the fourth wave moment? It is important,
perhaps, to think of the context in which this march is unfolding,
considering this protest specifically in conjunction with UK laws against
sexual assault. Rape and sexual assault are illegal, with the former
punishable by life imprisonment,7 while marital rape was made illegal
in 1991. Although legislation would indicate that rape and sexual assault
are credited with the same level of severity as other crimes, this could be
contradicted with evidence of conviction rates, as well as the number of
cases that even make it to trial. According to Rape Crisis, 85,000 women
and 12,000 men are raped each year, while 1 in 5 of women aged 16–59
have experienced some form of sexual assault (Ministry of Justice 2013).
More worryingly still, is that only 15% of women chose to report the
incidents to the police (Ministry of Justice 2013). This is further
complicated by the Conservative government’s approach to women’s
services, which have experienced unprecedented hardship in light of
austerity cuts.8 Recent research led by Sylvia Walby has recognised an
7
The Crown Prosecution Services advises that the maximum sentence for rape is life: http://www.
cps.gov.uk/legal/p_to_r/rape_and_sexual_offences/sentencing/.
8
Regarding access to justice for women victims of violence, a crucial concern raised was in regard
to the changes and cuts to legal aid, following the adoption of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and
Punishment of Offenders Act 2012. Through this law, the majority of family law proceedings,
including disputes involving access to/residence of children, were reportedly made ineligible for
legal aid funding. Exceptions were made for applications for protective injunctions for domestic
violence or forced marriage, as well as for divorce, matrimonial finance and cases relating to
children where evidence of violence is provided advocates argue, however, that the evidence
required to demonstrate domestic violence places an onerous burden upon victims. For example,
women are required to pay for documentary evidence (£50 for a letter from their doctor and £60
for a memorandum of conviction), even when on welfare benefits, with no recourse to public
funds: http://www.endviolenceagainstwomen.org.uk/data/files/UNSR_VAW_UK_report_-_19_
May_2015.pdf
increase in violence against women, while overall violent crime con-

tinues to fall (2015). This is in part, due to a resurgence of sexism, but
also strongly related to the disappearance of women-specific services.
While these services are not able to prevent an initial crime, they enable
women to leave difficult domestic situations, thus ensuring that the
crime is unlikely to be repeated. Women’s Resource Centre conducted
research of women’s organisations in 2011, finding that austerity had
resulted in 64% of respondents losing funding, with the majority of
organisations having less than 75% of their funding secured for the
following year (Women’s Resource Centre 2012). Conversely, 94% of
respondents identified an increase in need for their service within the last
year (Women’s Resource Centre 2012).
In their ten-year review ‘Where Are We Now: 10 Year Review of
Westminster Government Action to End Violence Against Women
and Girls’ released in November 2015, the End Violence Against
Women organisation note the change in the current cultural climate.
They suggest that two phenomena have become central to the dis-
cussion of violence against women: a new wave of feminist activism,
that emerged within 2012 and happens primarily online, and then the
Jimmy Saville sexual offence revelations (EVAW 2015: 4–5). Saville
has propelled the crime to the forefront, while exposing the way in
which respectable institutions have worked to cover up or even
facilitate sexual assault. The new wave, relates to my writing on the
fourth wave, which as I have established, has been aided and sup-
ported by Internet use, as well as fuelled by cuts to women’s services
and very public revelations about the nature of sexual assault. This
aspect of the fourth wave then, of which the Slut Walk is a sign, is
very much related to the other affects that are arising out of (1) the
public revelations surrounding our attitude to sexual assault, particu-
larly if protected celebrities or authorities are involved, and (2) the
way in which public services for women are disappearing, meaning
that the reduction of sexual assault, rape and domestic violence is
becoming increasingly difficult.
The Slut Walk in the UK is representative of a single incident in
Canada going viral, gaining international traction. I would argue,
however, that it is symbolic of far more within this fourth wave
moment. While the Slut Walk predated revelations surrounding

Jimmy Saville and others,9 it demonstrates important issues that
are central to the way the fourth wave moment is bound to sexual
violence, and especially, violence against women. It demonstrates,
firstly, that rape culture so derided by critics such as Roiphe, is being
continually critiqued.10 Not only does this speak to feminism’s
difficult temporalities, but it demonstrates the way this age is engaged
with both society and culture, as opposed to necessarily legislative
change. If laws are already in place to prevent rape, and yet rape is
still happening, then it is the lack of funding, lack of access and
pervasive societal attitude that need challenging. The Slut Walk
was born of anger, outrage and disbelief. Disbelief seems central to
this moment of feminism, in that it describes the incredulity that
certain attitudes can still exist, while acknowledging that the attitude
is one that is rife within society. There is disbelief in continual
dialogue with inevitability, which serves to fuel anger and outrage.
It seems to me that these affects map back onto the organisations
I have cited before. There is a converging of the disbelief about cuts
to public services, in addition to the inevitability of systemic cover-
ups of abuse and sexual violence. The fourth wave allows for the
disbelief and inevitability to speak to one another on account of
the waves that have preceded this moment. The fourth wave
moment is simultaneously drawing on a legacy of feminism which
has angrily and effectively contested rape culture as well as sexual
violence against women, while existing in a temporality in which
9
Jimmy Savile was a celebrity who used his position to abuse girls and boys, as well as men and
women, often seeking out the most vulnerable. His abuse is thought to have lasted from 1940 to
2009. For a profile of Savile, see the BBC’S reportage: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-
arts-19984684.
10
Roiphe’s The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism is especially notorious for its rejection of
contemporary feminism. While acknowledging the progress of previous waves, Roiphe claimed
that the incarnation of the social movement in the 1990s was built on fear and victimhood. This
approach to feminism undermines rape culture, and places responsibility for sexual assault on
victims as opposed to perpetrators. Importantly, then, this fourth wave moment recognises that we
do exist in a rape culture, which has been consolidated through the number of high-profile sexual
abuse cases gaining media recognition. These cases have made evident that sexual assault can occur
without risk.
women’s services are still not receiving the attention or funding that
they need.
The Slut Walk also addresses the idea of essentialism, and identity
in relation to sexual assault. It contests the widely held belief that
there is a certain type of ‘victim’ and furthermore, that there might
be a form of ‘asking for it’. That is not to say that these kinds of
contestations have not happened in previous waves, but rather that
they are now framed within a different and very specific social and
political context. While I mentioned in my chapter on narratives
that a focus on ‘progress’ as a measure of feminism was possibly a
false one, both in relation to temporality and the politics itself, we
nonetheless expect that social progress will have been made. In fact,
in the articles I cited earlier, there was an acknowledgement of the
fact that generally violent crime against males has decreased (Walby
2016). That is a marker of the way legislative change, activism, and
focus on educating against violence, have had an impact on everyday
experience within society. However, it is these expectations of pro-
gress, these markers, that allow feminism to engage with the unique-
ness of a simultaneous disbelief and feeling of inevitability. The Slut
Walk embodies both of these affects, and attempts to move them
into a productive contestation of identity. The multiplicity of the
march suggests that there is not a specific kind of ‘victim’ and that
there is no dress code that constitutes a kind of invitation for sexual
assault. The empowering of the victim, as well as empowering those
who might be considered as more ‘vulnerable’ to assault, or those
who dress in revealing clothing, is a necessary part of feminism. It
ensures that misunderstanding around sexual assault and rape vic-
tims is not allowed to propagate, at least not without healthy
contestation.
The Slut Walk is also unique for its approach to language. This is
not to say that feminism has not previously been concerned with the
ways specific vocabularies might work to strengthen patriarchy (Rich
1995; Riley 2000). In this instance, there is a focus in this particular
moment on the concept of ‘slut shaming’ (Valenti 2008), one that is
borne of the intersection of increased conversation on sex work, as
well as the emergence of different modes of feminist engagement
with the body and sexuality. It is impossible to overlook that cur-

rently we occupy a more sexualised culture than ever (Long 2012).11
Thus, the reclamation of slut as a derogatory word for someone who
dresses or acts a specific way, serves to support those who refuse to
neatly align with culture. This self-determination is what is perceived as
threatening: it demonstrates a self-possession as well as a refusal to
capitulate to the shaming of women for their sexual appetites or
behaviours. Ironically, while we live in a culture that might reward
and celebrate women’s nakedness if it is bound up in capital, we seem
to be less accepting of it as self-determination. The cultural construct of
the slut, while it might be damning, also has rewards in terms of fame
and earning capacity. The Slut Walk asks that if only for a few hours of
protest, everyone involved self-defines as a slut, thus taking on a
derogatory vocabulary that is often used to shame women. In doing
so, it reverses the traditional associations with slut: it undermines the
relationship between the rewards for conforming to a cultural construc-
tion of slut, and celebrates a reclamation of sexual autonomy.
In spite of this, the Slut Walk is still problematic. While it protests rape
culture and a flawed approach to sexual assault, it does not take the
different cultural manifestations of ‘slut’ into account. Certainly, in
America and Canada, there were a number of problems surrounding the
Slut Walk in relation to women of colour and black feminist activists.
Black Women’s Blueprint published an open letter stating that ‘slut’ had
different cultural connotations for BME women, and thus, could not be
reclaimed in a way that was empowering or progressive.12 While nothing
similar was reported in the UK, the problems surrounding this American
incarnation of the march does demonstrate that some forms of activism
cannot work universally. While the Slut Walk in England seemed to
represent a range of identities quite effectively, it was part of a wider
11
For further information on this see Natasha Walters Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism (2010),
Ariel Levy Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture (2005), Kat Banyard The
Equality Illusion: The Truth about Women and Men Today (2010) and Gail Dines Pornland: How
Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality (2010).
12
The full letter was printed in a number of news outlets, including Huffington Post, which can
be found here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-brison/slutwalk-black-women_b_980215.
html
international conversation about the ways feminism and racial politics

cannot always intersect with one another productively.
In the UK itself, the Slut Walk seems to have lost momentum,
disappearing now from the fourth wave of feminism. This indicates
that the fourth wave can be constituted through gestures, rapidity and
immediacy, which inevitably means that some forms of activism will
disappear or stop before the wave reaches its natural dissipation point.
While this is not a weakness, necessarily, it does demonstrate a wider
problem: organisations continue with an eye to longevity and long-term
impacts, while marches and rapidly organised campaigns might consti-
tute more of a gesture within the larger movement of the politics. The
gesture can be fleeting, but is always located, contextual and necessary as
a form of communication. The fact that what I am defining as gestural
protests can be organised with such ease and rapidity is very important
for the affective convergences of the fourth wave. It allows for single
events to become world-wide phenomenon, fuelling conversation about
the ongoing problems of violence against women, the need for systemic
acknowledgement and combatting of such crimes and the difficulties of
specific vocabularies. The way in which the fourth wave moves, in part
facilitated by technology’s capacity for speed, allows for catalysts of
extreme feeling to be responded to. Even if the response does not last
for the rest of feminism’s lifetime, it demonstrates now that individual
incidents of sexism will not go unrecognised, undocumented and unan-
swered. Whether it is a single tweet of protest, or hundreds of activists
on the street, there is a sense that the fourth wave focuses strongly on
exposure and response, using the anger and disbelief to fuel action,
which embodies those strong and infectious affects.
Everyday Sexism Archive: New Forms

of Archiving
Archives hold both interesting possibilities and limitations for a feminist
movement. When women were removed from the public eye or not
occupying positions of power, they were neglected from public records,
resulting in incomplete archives of human existence (Lerner 1975). As

such, it is far harder to construct a history of female experience, in the
same way that a number of archives seem lacking in information on
women. Much of women’s history has been read from the silences and
absences that punctuate the narrative of Western history. It is for this
very reason that the term ‘herstory’ was coined as a necessary rejoinder to
the male-dominated understanding of the history and past (Elam 1994;
Scott 1999). Without straying too far into this sense of historical
representation, I want to address the importance of archiving, and the
role that it can play within feminist activism.
Archival practices are not passive, but instead, fulfil political functions.
In ‘Archive Fever’, Jaques Derrida writers that ‘there is no political power
without control of the archive, if not memory’ (1995: 11). This concept
becomes particularly important in my following discussion of Everyday
Sexism, a Twitter account and website founded to record incidents of
daily misogyny. Started in 2012, Everyday Sexism was an experiment in
which founder, Laura Bates, attempted to document incidents of everyday
misogyny, accepting submissions from women via Twitter. Bates, makes
much of the fact that women are wilfully forgetful of everyday incidents,
leading to a culture in which certain forms of sexism become permissible.
It is possible, then, that the archive could be seen as a remedy to
forgetfulness or the act of forgetting. Bates’ Everyday Sexism archive is
particularly important because it unfolds within the present moment. It is
not a case of collecting a series of testimonies, ephemera, and information,
and then storing them within a static physical location. Rather, tweets are
received and retweeted in real time (or the time in which Everyday Sexism
workers can dedicate to the account) ensuring that this archive is lived,
reflecting everyday experiences within this contemporary moment. The
archive is not an attempt to store information from a different historical
time, collecting pieces that are representative of specific movements or
campaigns. The archive, instead, in this instance, is being created within
the moment, in an attempt to ensure that documenting and creating
collective memory contributes to a surge of feminist activism.
This kind of archival practice poses a particularly interesting set of
challenges to our contemporary. It prioritises a multiplicity of voices, for
one, without creating hierarchies of experience. In doing so, it opens up
possibilities for new archival practices, in which curation is less selective.

The curator is working almost as a mediator for the information that is
being received: its volume is of as much importance as its content in terms
of representing the endemic experiences of sexual harassment and abuse.
Finally, it suggests that archiving as an activist practice can happen within
the contemporary. As opposed to working retrospectively, archives can be
created within the moment, continually added to as the cultural landscape
undergoes change. While Everyday Sexism does not claim to have insti-
gated mass change, organised marches, or supported specific campaigns,
through collating and collecting there is a sense that the organisation is
allowing insight into widespread female experience, resulting in shifts in
perspective from those who might have otherwise been unaware.
Cvetkovich also discusses a new approach to the practice of the archive,
looking to counterculture movements and the feelings that they evoke.
She notes that ‘both gay and lesbian as well as activist history have
ephemeral, unorthodox, and frequently suppressed archives’ (2003:
166). Consequently, ‘cultural artefacts become the archive of something
more ephemeral’, which validates more unorthodox modes of documen-
tation as a legitimate reflection of a particular moment (2003: 10).
Cvetkovich raises important questions about what it might mean to create
an archive that is comprised of illegitimate sources: the outputs of those
who exist on the margins, documents that have no pretense to objectivity
and so on. How can we collect and record feelings so that it might be
representative of particular moments within history? How do we create a
history of those who are not in positions that enable a writing of history?
While Cvetkovich is describing gay and lesbian experience here, specifi-
cally, it is my contention that these problems are very relevant to female
experience. While there are invariably archives, such as the Feminist
Library and Women’s Library, that work brilliantly to document the
feminist movement and women’s experiences, it is difficult to capture
the affects of specific moments purely through their ephemera.13 This
13
Both the Women’s Library and Feminist Library house archives of women’s history as well as
the history of feminist activism. The Women’s Library has resources that span the last 500 years,
with a real emphasis on European Women’s history, while the Feminist Library has been archiving
seems particularly relevant for everyday affects, which occupy an interest-

ing position within this temporality. As I shall explore through Everyday
Sexism, everyday affects are easy to ignore, as they have often been
established as normal. What is it, then, that suddenly transforms the
everyday acceptable nature of these negative affects into something that
constitutes a wave of feminism? I would suggest it is not purely the micro-
negative affects that are transformed, but that the context in which they
occur can shift such that they suddenly receive much wider and more
intense scrutiny.
Everyday Sexism was established after what founder Bates describes as
her ‘tipping point’ (Bates 2014). It was not that she had encountered an
incident of violent misogyny, or in fact that she had been exposed to
anything outside of the ‘ordinary’ in terms of casual sexism. In fact, she
describes the catalyst for establishing Everyday Sexism as a consideration of
‘little incidents’ that all occur from ‘day to day’ (2014: loc.117).
Significantly, Bates’ focus from the offset was not on a deliberate or
specifically directed campaign, but rather on the ways we are so accus-
tomed to regular incidents of sexism that they no longer register. This lack
of acknowledgement creates a culture in which sexist or misogynistic
behaviours can thrive; they are so commonplace that they are no longer
questioned, but endured and ignored. Bates herself raises this issue in her
2014 Everyday Sexism book, in which she writes that in addition to playing
events down, she had barely ‘remembered’ them (2014: loc.127). It is this
concept of ‘memory’ that seems vital to the way in which Bates presents
the project of Everyday Sexism. What she finds noticeable and startling is
not that sexism occurs everyday, both on a small and large scale, but that
her method of coping is to ‘forget’. This forgetfulness, however it might
facilitate a feminist survival, does not resist or challenge dominant culture
that allows for such misogyny to exist unchecked.
‘herstories’ since 1975. Both organisations, however, have had to battle in order to stay open. In
2016, The Feminist Library discovered that it would be evicted from its current building on the
30th October of that year. They now need to find a new space as well as raising the requisite funds
to maintain the library there. The Women’s Library, in contrast, was forced to move from a
warehouse run by London Metropolitan University in 2014, when the university could no longer
afford to run it. The library is now housed at LSE.
It was this thought process that led Bates to question the women that
she knew. Although her initial explorations were anecdotal, just amongst
friends and family, she found that all of the women were able to recount
numerous incidents of major sexism, all of which had happened
recently. Bates describes the experience of sexism as ‘reams and reams
of tiny pinpricks’ (2014; loc.135), something that the majority of
women seem to endure. However, in attempting to talk to people
about this experience, Bates found herself encountering a postfeminist
attitude, in which the everyday sexism was dismissed. On account of
women and feminism having attained ‘true equality’, people believed it
was impossible that micro-misogynies could occur unchecked on a day-
to-day basis. It was then that Bates realised that her intentional forget-
fulness was complicit in the erasure of women’s experiences of sexism.
While it enabled her to continue in a private, public, educational and
professional capacity, her refusal to acknowledge the sexism as part of a
wider and systemic problem was a form of complicity. Consequently,
Bates began to experiment with a form of archiving sexism online,
setting up a Twitter account which solicited submissions of experiences
from women, which were then retweeted. This was supplemented with a
website, where the longer stories requiring more than the 140-character
tweet limitation, were displayed in full. Within two months, there were
over 1,000 entries (Bates 2014: loc.187) and the website had received
international attention.
The nature of the submissions varied, from small incidents that were
often meant in jest but carried a serious impact, to sexual assault and
rape. Bates herself states that the project was required to move from
‘record[ing] daily instances of sexism’ to ‘document[ing] cases of serious
harassment’ (2014: loc.214). The response to Everyday Sexism was
totally unprecedented, and led to Bates wondering why so many
women were turning to her website and Twitter account as opposed to
seeking long-term support elsewhere. She realised that the interest might
actually stem from the fact that there was nowhere else for these women
to turn: there were very few places that offered an archive of these
incidents. Most importantly for those who participated, both through
contributing and reading the Twitter account, is that Everyday Sexism
fostered a sense of solidarity. It offered a means by which to combat the
invisibility of unnoticed harassment. The insidious nature with which

such acts occur has had two effects: making women feel as if they cannot
speak up, and then, eroding women’s entitlement to public spaces.
Whether on the street or at work, sexism is a continued reminder that
men dominate certain spaces, and that women are to be made very self-
conscious of their presence. Ultimately, however, Everyday Sexism is
intended to combat how unimportant issues of sexism contribute to a
spectrum of far more serious violence and inequality. The permissibility of
sexist or misogynistic jokes, as well as minor street harassment, are all part
of the way patriarchy is able to thrive in contemporary British society.
It is useful to consider, then, the way in which the Everyday Sexism
Twitter account takes shape, and the ramifications that has for the
archive. It is also worthwhile knowing that Bates has extended her
experiment into a full book, Everyday Sexism, as well as writing regularly
for The Guardian, and doing university tours. While Everyday Sexism
has now become a more formalised version of its original, it still con-
tinues to run the Twitter account. Bates has also had to expand her team
to be able to accommodate the volume of people engaging with, and
submitting to, the site. Primarily, however, Everyday Sexism has chal-
lenged the way feminists work with commonly experienced aggressions,
as well as how these experiences are documented. It creates an archive
that is both feminist in content and form, making use of the rapidity and
immediate organising space of Twitter to collect and store information.
The Everyday Sexism archive also emerges purely from negative affects.
In storing up women’s experiences of harassment, whether of an incred-
ibly violent or minor nature, the archive takes negativity and perpetuates
it. Through storing the negative affects within an easily accessible and
public site, Everyday Sexism is attempting to turn bad feeling into
productive documentation; an archive that demonstrates the depth
and width of the problem, in order to challenge any postfeminist
discourse. It is to make visible an issue that is invariably laden with
feelings of doubt, shame, humiliation, self-blame, anger and futility.
Certainly, anyone who submits their own experience to the site will not
be doing so because it has produced good feeling.
This leads me to consider the concept of trauma. In An Archive of
Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures, Cvetkovich
looks to trauma studies, stating that for the most part, the discipline has
been concerned with historical events that occupy a large space within
our cultural awareness. Thus, trauma is often found and studied after
events such as war, or genocides and holocausts. These events are not
short lived, nor do they work within a personal sense. Certainly, the
collateral damage is human lives, and individuals are subject to extreme
and terrible experience. However, the trauma is strengthened and mag-
nified by the fact that these events have been facilitated by culture,
society and politics. They are often international affairs. Their scope
does not necessarily make space in which the personal account becomes
central, unless it is operating as testimony to the horror of the experience
as a whole. While I am not suggesting that experiences of sexism are in
any way akin to those of holocaust survivors, Everyday Sexism is
attempting to offer a different form of traumatic archive. The site does
not represent the whole; personal testimony comes together to give an
insight into a systemic problem, without offering strategies to combat
the system. Certainly, we see aspects of it manifesting through the
collected tweets, but the problem is possibly too ranging and sprawling
for personal testimony to be used as retrospective and damning critique.
Unlike the traumatic experiences of war or the holocaust, which are
enabled and facilitated by a country’s complicity in a series of politically
and socially established structures, sexism and misogyny cannot be so
obviously located. Cvetkovich, in focusing on queer experience and
negative affect, writes that she wants to consider trauma from the
margins, in a tangential and everyday sense, as opposed to taking on
world-changing historical events. She focuses, instead, on the traumatic
experiences of existing in societies in which identity is encoded nega-
tively: either ignored, or illegalised.
Important for Cvetkovich’s work is her problematisation of the
relationship between feminism and trauma. Acknowledging that female
experiences of misogyny, sexism and sexual abuse are traumatic, she shies
away from exploring or identifying it in the same way as significant
historical moments that produced trauma. She writes that her feminism
creates ‘an interest in bridging the sometimes missing intersections
between sexual and national traumas, and the sense of trauma as every-
day’ (2003: 19–20). This is significant for my thinking about Everyday
Sexism in two senses. Cvetkovich recognises the gap between the way in
which national traumas are approached, and as a result, the way trau-
matic sexual experience can become effaced, or considered too personal
to be dealt with in a way that is both public and national. To add further
complexity to this debate, the World Health Organisation declared
Violence Against Women to be an International epidemic. It seems
impossible that a phenomenon could be understood as an epidemic,
and yet find difficulty in bridging the gap between small experiences and
then the effects of national trauma. This is perhaps where the ‘everyday’
suggested by Cvetkovich, and enacted by Everyday Sexism, takes on
significance. The ‘everyday’ could be elided with the unremarkable, or
the normative. It happens with such regularity, that it is almost
expected. Similarly, the repetition of such events and incidents lessens
and lessens their impact; even if the individual is heavily affected by the
experience or events, the commonality of it means that the event is
widely perceived as wholly unremarkable. Everyday Sexism has a com-
plex relationship with this concept of trauma. It holds and reproduces
the quality of trauma, even if it is difficult for the banal and unremark-
able incidents of sexism to constitute a national trauma. Everyday
Sexism takes on the easily ignored nature of regular occurrences, and
through reproducing them in their masses, begins to communicate the
way sexism is both endemic and epidemic.
In Feeling Backward, Love looks to Foucault’s understanding of the
archive, ultimately describing it as ‘an encounter with historical violence,
which includes both physical injury and the violence of obscurity, an
annihilation from memory’ (2007: 49). This seems very much to speak
to the issues of feminist archives: there is both physical injury involved
here, or an obvious impact on the bodies of women in regards to sexism.
There is also the problem of erasure: women are complicit in ignoring
misogyny because it allows them to function, simultaneous to the fact
that women’s experiences can easily be written out of history. The
violence of obscurity is analogous to the violence of actual sexism and
misogyny: in effacing the experience, experiences are allowed to con-
tinue. How is this experience altered when activists are creating the
archive, as opposed to engaging with it? Furthermore, what does it
mean to reject the ‘historical’ archive, and work with one that is entirely
contemporary, being formulated and built within the moment of acti-

vism, to reflect that very moment? Archives are concerned with history
and how it is remembered, but they can also pose questions around
methodology, representation and polyvocality. It is necessary to con-
struct histories of violence that sit alongside our more palatable and
mainstream histories, so that experiences of trauma are not forgotten.
However, I would still argue that what is ‘everyday’ can struggle to
become historical. Through its total lack of novelty, and the absence of
surprise in the face of ongoing violence against women, it is difficult to
see the ways in which it might be archived to acknowledge a similar
history of violence. This struggle to create historical archives from the
everyday of experience, as opposed to memorable events such as protests,
fundraisers, or news stories, supports my move into the contemporary.
It is possible to map the concepts of obscurity and annihilation from
memory that Love outlines, back onto Bates’ original motivation for
founding Everyday Sexism. She had discovered that wilful forgetfulness
was one of the central problems of everyday sexism. It allowed for the
incidents to go unmarked and unnoticed, which worked against the
possibility of ever creating an archive of violence against women. It is
the act of making an archive of a specific moment, within the moment
itself, that becomes the most important gesture in relation to temporality
and affect. The technologies of this particular time (in conjunction with
the emergence of the fourth wave) have allowed Bates to create an
immediate archive. Furthermore, the women who submit to Everyday
Sexism are not purely airing their grievances publically, but intentionally
contributing to the building of an archive. In fact, I would argue that the
strictures and limitations of Twitter prevent the full relaying of stories.
One-hundred and forty characters does not allow for expansion or eluci-
dation, but purely the barest details of the event as it happened. This seems
to circumvent the feminist practice of telling a story publically, for a sense
of ‘emotional relief or personal transformation’ (Cvetkovich 2003: 2).
The brevity and condensed nature of the form make such a cathartic
storytelling impossible. Instead, then, emphasis is shifted to creating the
archive as a form of activism, documenting experiences so that they are
marked in some way, and so that their pure volume forces a revision of the
indifferent way we approach ‘everyday’ experience.
In terms of a specific affectivity, Everyday Sexism is still highly

concerned with immediacy, responsiveness and online rapidity. These
characteristics not only create a sense of momentum, but they allow for a
surge of action to be maintained, through both remote access and easy
contribution. This creates a feeling of openness and participation, as well
as a form of sharing. While victims of sexism are able to ‘share’ their
experience, the format of the Twitter account allows for the archive as a
whole to be ‘shared’ widely. Again, this facilitates access and contribu-
tion, ensuring the the archive continues to build, while representing a
multiplicity of different voices. This creates a sense of solidarity: a mass
sharing that draws parallels between women that might not have existed
before. It is also important to note that Everyday Sexism deals almost
exclusively in the negative affects of street harassment and sexual assault.
As opposed to negating or overlooking bad feeling, the site embraces it.
Furthermore, there is no attempt to turn the bad feeling into good feeling,
by which I mean a productive affect that allows a sense of catharsis for
each individual contributor. Instead, the site enacts the ways negative
affect is incredibly productive for political movements, especially in
moments of intense and sustained activism. The negative affects do not
require changing or transformation because it is not the role of political
movements to turn bad feeling into good. It is, however, necessary to
recognise the way bad feeling can serve to fuel the fourth wave affective
temporality. The fourth wave moment, then, could be understood as
engaging with traumatic experience in new ways, in addition to innovat-
ing archival practices based around technological advancements.
Facebook Advertising Pages: The Power

of Capital
Feminism has a difficult relationship with capitalism, with advertising
and marketing often drawing on sexualised women’s bodies in order to
sell products. Women themselves have become commodities in the
attempts to make commodities appealing to a wide audience. Many
readings of postfeminism explore the relationship between feminism and
capitalism, arguing that a woman’s right to buy is not analogous to

women’s rights (Tasker and Negra 2007; McRobbie 2009; Penny 2011;
Power 2009). Feminism also has a complicated relationship with our
current neoliberal context. Neoliberalism is defined as ‘the normaliza-
tion of deregulation, privitisation, and the withdrawal of the state from
social provision’ (Evans 2015: 40). It represents a specific set of problems
for feminism, felt ‘first, at a discursive level; second, through its amor-
ality; third, by its focus on market-driven solutions; and fourth, in its
inherent belief in the power of individualism and individual agency’
(Evans 2015: 40). Amorality seems counter to any movement concerned
with civil rights, while market-driven solutions force feminists towards a
reliance on a market which, in turn, exploits women. While individual-
ism might seem to cultivate a sense that the individual can determine
their own fate, it actually results in a very select few excelling while
others are forgotten. The question within this neoliberal context is
whether feminism can escape the reaching and all-encompassing nature
of capitalism and individualism. While this might be a specifically
Western problem, in that cooperation and cooption can be seen as
viable forms of being counted, it still troubles contemporary feminism.
One of the best-selling feminist books in this fourth wave moment
has been Sandberg’s Lean In (2013). While Sandberg is American, her
work was very popular and widely discussed within the UK. The book
offers advice for women who work in positions of seniority within high
powered industries, as well as giving insight into Sandberg’s own career
trajectory. Rather than thinking about intersectional feminism,
Sandberg’s book focuses specifically on women within wealthy busi-
nesses, and how they might be able to use feminism to advance their
careers. She does advocate good working relationships between women,
but there is little consideration of feminism for women who are not able
to afford childcare, or do not have the seniority to influence child-
friendly work schedules. This seems to resonate very strongly with a
neoliberal understanding of feminism: it is individualistic, celebrating
the ways in which the already privileged can effect change within their
workplace, and locates the social movement within market reliance in
which high earning is considered a fulfilling political act. Sandberg’s
focus is on how women can make use of their industry to advance their
career best. It is undeniable that her book is feminist, in spite of the

absence of an intersectional and class-based approach to feminism.14
This demonstrates that elements of this fourth wave are heavily related
to capital and capitalism. In fact, it has even formed the basis of some
very successful online activism.
In 2013, Soraya Chemaly, Jacklyn Friedman and Laura Bates noticed
that Facebook had a number of groups online advocating violence
against women. While the groups were positioned as ‘humorous’, they
contained explicit images of women, in addition to pictures of women
being violated or abused. The majority were accompanied by a ‘funny’
punchline, relating to the ways women had transgressed the kitchen-
world boundary, and so were deserving of punishment. There were also
a number of groups especially dedicated to sexual violence, with jokes
and images about drugging women or raping them. In conjunction with
WAM, Women Action & The Media, the three activists began to report
the pages to Facebook. The website itself allows all users to report
offensive material, for which one of the justifications is ‘graphic vio-
lence’. Unfortunately, the social media site’s moderators disagreed on
what constituted both offensive material and graphic violence. For
example, an image with a woman’s skull smashed in and the caption ‘I
like her for her brains’ did not constitute graphic violence as outlined by
the Facebook Community Standard (WAM 2013).
At the time, Facebook stated that it did not permit ‘hate speech, but
distinguishes between serious and humorous speech’.15 Within a week,
participants in the campaign had sent over 60,000 tweets and 5,000
emails, with over 100 women’s social justice organisations putting their
names to the protest (WAM 2013). In addition to the number of
activists and organisations who backed the campaign, Facebook felt its
full force when brands began to withdraw their advertisements. Realising
14
Dawn Foster wrote Lean Out (2016) as an answer to Sandberg’s Lean In. The work looks at
corporate feminist culture, thinking about how the politics needs to respond to the increased
wealth gap post financial crisis.
15
For further information on the dialogue between FBrape campaign and Facebook, see
Christopher Zara’s ‘Facebook Rape Campaign Ignites Twitter: Boycott Threats from #FBrape
Get Advertisers’ Attention’ here: http://www.ibtimes.com/facebook-rape-campaign-ignites-twit
ter-boycott-threats-fbrape-get-advertisers-1278999.
that Facebook were offering unsatisfactory responses and remaining

unmotivated to act on their offensive content, the campaign leaders
changed tactics. They encouraged their supporters and followers to
contact the brands whose advertisements appeared alongside the mis-
ogynistic pages. The idea was that while users and charities might not
hold much sway, Facebook would feel the financial loss, and be forced to
respond. Most significantly for the UK, Nationwide and Nissan agreed
to pull their advertising from Facebook completely; they were joined by
13 other brands (WAM 2013). Other large brands, such as Dove,
Zipcar, Ocado and Vistaprint, while refusing to pull their advertising,
did respond to complaints by promising to contact Facebook in support
of the offending pages’ removal. The pressure from brands ultimately
resulted in Facebook removing a number of the pages, as well as
committing to changing their Standards policy, updating guidelines
and giving training for those evaluating hate speech reports, as well as
increasing accountability for those who established the pages.16
The Facebook Rape Campaign was uniformly understood as a success
for feminism and social media activism. Internationally, a number of
women and organisations had committed their time and effort to
ensuring that offensive content was not published with impunity. It
also demanded that a corporation, in this case Facebook, assume some
accountability for the way its service was being used. Whether
Facebook’s commitment to removing offensive content has continued
with the same momentum or not, their agreement to change guidelines
and train staff demonstrates an effort towards change. It is this concept
of accountability that becomes especially important for this fourth wave
moment. While feminism has long been concerned with the depiction of
women within the media, and especially advertising, this shows a differ-
ent approach to the relationship between the politics and capitalism.
The brands involved, especially those who were willing to engage, or
even pull their advertisements, demonstrate the way in which corpora-
tions must at least maintain a forward facing support of their female
16
See Facebook’s terms and conditions: https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-safety/contro
versial-harmful-and-hateful-speech-on-facebook/574430655911054
customers. It is not simply a case of holding individuals accountable, or

expecting political institutions to instigate, but asking brands to take
responsibility for where they are located. While, cynically, it might be
easy for a brand like Dove to appear feminist, it is much harder for them
to engage genuinely with feminism in an activism sense. Certainly, the
body positive adverts that Dove has been making are important in terms
of targeting self-confidence and image. They also show a range of
women, taking on body stereotypes often used to sell products.
However, this kind of advertising appeal ensures a wider customer
base, as well as a sense of brand loyalty; women could feel as if Dove
as a brand supports their individuality, while delivering a body positive
message.17 The ‘feminist’ advertising works to consolidate the product as
good for women. Pulling advertisements from social media, however,
demonstrates that a brand is willing to make a loss in order to support
feminism. Dove’s failure to do so attracted a significant amount of
criticism: it is far easier to make feminist adverts, than it is to do feminist
activism (Bates 2014).
This demonstrates the way the relationship between capitalism and
feminism is a difficult one. While the former makes use of the latter in
order to increase brand loyalty and product sales, there is a sense of the
two entering into a progressive dialogue. That said, if a feminist’s
relationship to capitalism is akin to that of Sandberg, then it will
demonstrate few intersectional benefits, instead prioritising the needs
of already privileged, educated, white women. However, if feminism
chooses to use the power of brands, and the capital associated with
them, in order to further protest, then there is a sense of productivity.
I would argue that no one can make a case for those pages remaining
on Facebook. On account of the ubiquity of social media, the easy
access of the insulting material, and sexual violence being repeatedly
17
Dove launched a self-esteem project for women, with the tagline that ‘A girl should feel free to
be herself’. Having discovered that body anxiety presents a number of girls from participating in
activities, Dove established a programme with parents, teachers, mentors and youth workers to
boost self-esteem and body confidence: http://selfesteem.dove.co.uk/Articles/Written/Our_
Mission_in_Practice.aspx. Dove has also attempted a reconsideration of the concept of ‘beauty’
to empower and enable women to undo society’s standards: http://www.dove.us/Social-Mission/
campaign-for-real-beauty.aspx.
treated as laughable, the content needed to be removed. It is, perhaps,

even better that the content was ultimately removed in such a public
campaign, forcing wider attention onto the issue of ‘tasteless humour’
as a means by which to propagate hatred of women. The pressure of
women’s organisations and individual campaigners’ emails were not
enough to incentivise Facebook to remove both images and groups. In
fact, they responded on two occasions, first to reject the individual
requests, and then in a wider statement to assert that their policy on
hate speech was able to understand the fine line between misogyny and
bad humour. The loss of advertisement money, then, was central to
influencing Facebook’s decision to take a stronger stance on anti-
women pages.
In terms of affect, this creates an environment in which feminism is
operating with a certain level of complicity. While we might acknowl-
edge the way women’s bodies are monetised or used to increase profit,
we also have to acknowledge that brand power can be used in the
name of feminism. It is almost impossible within the neoliberal age to
have a politics, especially within the UK and USA, that does not
engage with capital and industry. It can be used to maximise results,
and to strengthen campaigns with either sponsorship or financial
repercussions for those who do not act swiftly and with conviction.
There is also a sense of empowerment, that if feminists are able to
influence corporations, we will ultimately see greater effects. This
empowerment, however, is not without a price: some would argue
that any feminism which wilfully engages within a neoliberal world is
one which is unrecognisable from the movement’s origins. How,
then, can feminism reconcile its resistance to industries that use
women’s bodies and sexualisation when it is commercially expedient,
with their need for financial support and corporate power? In spite of
Sandberg’s claim that Mark Zuckerberg created a progressive and
female-friendly work environment, through flexible work hours and
supported maternity leave, Facebook was still unwilling to pull pages
that advocated violence against women. It is also interesting to note,
that this resistance was attributed to pure differences in humour.
Once more, we can see how humour is being used to negate femin-
ism, or position feminism as humourless. So, while Facebook could
be progressive in one sense, in regards to its female employees, it was

not willing to anger users over the removal of abusive groups.
Brand intervention was necessary to gain the desired outcome. It is
perhaps, a new form of activism, in which feminists target the profits
and the capital accrued by companies in order to effect change.
Certainly, No More page 3 has tirelessly campaigned to change the
status of The Sun, having it relegated to the top rows in the supermarket,
or covered with brown paper bags. However, the campaigns took many
years of physical intervention in stores, as well as engagement in public
debate. It was when high street retailers joined the debate that the
campaign gained traction. Page 3 still exists, but it exists in a watered-
down and less-visible version, mostly on account of corporations such as
Tesco and WH Smith implementing the organisation’s suggested pro-
tocols.18 From all of this, I appreciate that the affect of this fourth wave
then, is complicated. Not only is there greater Transatlantic dialogue, on
account of women in business, the popularity of Sandberg and the
internationalisation of brands, there is a sense that neoliberalism is
prevalent in the entire Western world, as opposed to just the UK.
Women in business are pleased to be able to incorporate feminism
into their work and use it in order to negotiate salaries, sort out childcare
and support their professional ascension. Similarly, campaigns that can
mobilise brand loyalty will feel a sense of empowerment and productiv-
ity: there is a relief that as a consumer, we can exercise some power in
relation to the brands we support and buy. However, there is also an
ongoing sense that feminism must in some way capitulate to neoliber-
alism. It might even be that neoliberalism is so all-pervasive that activists
are required to find a way to work with it: full dismissal is an impossi-
bility. When brands such as Dove, target women for their products, but
do not necessarily demonstrate a loyalty to their largest consumer base,
there is also a sense of disappointment. Feminists must acknowledge that
their use of capital and brand power within a neoliberal age is ultimately
18
No More Page 3 founder Lucy-Anne Holmes has discussed her activist burn-out in an article for
Huffington Post in 2015. However, she does celebrate the way in which her campaign changed
Page 3, emphasising the useful support of supermarkets: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/
03/08/lucy-ann-holmes-no-more-page-3-the-sun_n_6826762.html.
to the benefit of corporations, as opposed to useful in a long-term social

movement.
£5 Note and Trolling Culture: Backlash

As Faludi suggests, feminist waves have come to be associated with an
attendant backlash. For the most part, while backlashes do not allow us
to identify a specific end point for a wave, they do demonstrate that the
surge of activism has dissipated or lost its strength. Faludi’s Backlash
(1991) recognises that there is a reversal of feminist progress, countering
the wave’s impact upon culture, politics and society. This chronology of
wave and backlash seems to have changed in this specific moment, in
part on account of the technology, but also in part because the dialogue
between feminists and their opposition is sustaining the energy of this
movement. Alternative to Faludi’s model, then, the Internet is allowing
for a simultaneous wave and backlash, in which trolling and men’s rights
activists are as ever-present as feminists. The word ‘backlash’ itself
implies a looking back: if progress has been achieved, then the intent
is either to look to a history in which feminism has less traction, or to
look back in terms of determining where the regression of women’s
rights should stop. While the backlash seems to be more evident within
American culture, certainly in relation to family planning and abortion
rights, it is also taking place within the UK.
In order to explore this in greater detail, I want to look at a specific
incident of activism, and the response it prompted from a wider and
anti-feminist public. In 2013, activist Caroline Criado-Perez began a
campaign to install a woman’s face on the ten-pound note. Having just
established ‘The Women’s Room’, an organisation committed to media
representation of women, she turned her attention to the fact that the
Bank of England was replacing Elizabeth Fry with an image of Winston
Churchill. This change, while probably not politically motivated, would
exorcise all women but the queen from British currency. This meant
that, other than our monarch who inherits power, wealth and status, the
UK did not believe that women were significant enough to take up space
on British stirling. Criado-Perez took to Twitter and immediately set up
a petition on Change.org, a website that allows activists and politically

engaged Internet users to establish causes and collect signatures. After
the campaign gained momentum, clearly capturing the British public’s
imagination, Criado-Perez was asked to do media appearances, which
led to her collaboration with a lawyer with whom she drafted a letter of
complaint to the Bank of England. Unsurprisingly, the bank rejected her
complaint, stating that women had been shortlisted but were not even-
tually chosen.
Having posted the rejection letter online, Criado-Perez’s campaign
gained further momentum, culminating in Jane Austen being chosen as
the new face of the ten-pound note. The bank also committed to
reviewing the process by which they choose their note figures, to ensure
that in future all selections are reflective of a more diverse UK. While
Criado-Perez has written very positively about the power of social media,
and its centrality to this specific campaign, she also experienced a
significant amount of abuse and threat, which has finally resulted in
two arrests.19 Once the bank had capitulated, the trolling began in
earnest. This was not necessarily a backlash in a traditional sense, but
the strength of the abuse Criado-Perez received was directly proportional
to the fact that she had waged a feminist campaign with a successful
outcome. As opposed to useful dialogue or debate, Criado-Perez was
flooded with threats to her physical safety. Criado-Perez states that the
two abusers arrested were representative of a tiny fraction of the overall
vitriol she was subjected to.
It is necessary then to think about the way the Internet has created a
space where trolling culture is both possible and acceptable, and how
that speaks specifically to the idea of a backlash unravelling simultaneous
to a fourth wave of feminism. This chapter makes a case for the
centrality of Internet communication to a fourth wave of feminism. Its
mode of operation has allowed for speed, instantaneity, and rapidity, all
of which contribute to affects converging upon one another, and
19
For further information see the article reporting the arrests of two people for online abuse:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jan/24/two-jailed-twitter-abuse-feminist-
campaigner
spreading amongst activists. However, the Internet is not the utopian

space that some feminists hoped it would be (Haraway 1991). While the
advent of the Internet suggested the possibility of genderless spaces of
freedom, it has for the most part replicated the social dynamics of our
offline reality (Penny 2013). The Internet’s anonymity has allowed for a
culture of non-culpability, in which people are willing to create more
difficulty than they might in the material world. The ease with which
false accounts and fake names are created online, has allowed trolling to
occur with a certain amount of impunity. While Criado-Perez’s case did
result in imprisonment, there are thousands of online incidents every
day which go by without notice. In her book, Cybersexism: Sex, Gender
and Power on the Internet (2013), Laurie Penny describes having an
opinion online as ‘the short skirt of the internet’ (loc. 247), in which the
simple fact of expression in a public forum means a woman is asking for
threats of sexual violence and bodily harm. Much like rape culture as a
whole, where a woman’s behaviour always amounts to some kind of
responsibility for abuse, having a loud and widely read platform on the
Internet is often seen as justification for hatred and threats. Thus, while
Facebook and Twitter have been useful in gaining momentum for
specific feminist campaigns, they have also created a space in which
activists can be bombarded with anonymous threats.20
This has created a temporality in which the backlash can occur
simultaneous to the feminist wave. Rather than this detracting from
the achievements or efforts of activism, it has created a dynamic in which
the wave is fuelled by opposition to it. Backlash describes the phenom-
enon as ‘an attempt to retract the handful of small and hard-won
victories that the feminist movement did manage to win for women’
(1991: 12). Faludi suggests that once feminism has reached a certain
strength, achieving social and political progress, there is inevitably a
20
In the Summer of 2014, American blogger Anita Sarkeesian was forced to leave her house after
her home address and death threats were posted online. In the UK, Laurie Penny, Hadley
Freeman, Grace Dent, Catherine Mayer and Mary Beard all received bomb threats, with Penny
tweeting that police had recommended she stay somewhere other than her home for the night. In
2013, Caroline Criado-Perez left London for Kent in order to escape both death threats and her
address having been put up on Twitter.
retaliation. This retaliation follows a wave, in order to undo the progress

that might have been achieved previously. In this instance, however, as
the trolls increase, so does the anger and resistance amongst feminism.
On account of the backlash happening with greater rapidity, to the point
that it in fact overlaps with the wave’s temporality, the wave itself is
feeding on that negativity. The dialogue facilitated by the Internet,
means that activists are able to engage directly with the ‘backlash’,
consolidating the fact that the wave and its counter are occurring within
the same temporality, affecting one another.
Penny addresses the dialogue between feminists and trolls, as well as
the abuse of women online, arguing that the Internet is not, in fact,
separate from our reality, but a space that engages with, and creates, the
real. She writes that our increased interaction online, both socially and
for work, means that ‘violence online is real violence . . . reaching epi-
demic levels and its time to end the pretence that it’s either acceptable or
inevitable’ (2013: loc.278). Cochrane agrees with Penny’s assertion that
the Internet facilitates abuse of women, as well as feminist politics. She
writes that in addition to feminist activism thriving, the Internet has
‘brought to light deep strains of misogyny, a vicious opposition to female
advancement that plays out in countless threads, which hum with threats
of rape, death and mutilation’ (2014: loc.711). Both feminists, here,
suggest a problematic for the simultaneity of the backlash and fourth
wave feminism. Penny recognises the way in which the Internet has
become so central to life, that it can no longer be considered separable.
While online experiences might once have been relegated to the realm of
the virtual, violence on the Internet has an impact on lives: the threat is
felt by real bodies that engage in a real world. Cochrane focuses on anti-
feminist websites proliferating with the same vigour and rapidity as
feminist websites. It would seem then, that the wave and its backlash
are matching one another within this contemporary. This has both
negatives and positives: if situations escalate on account of their dialogic
nature, then the repercussions can be far more serious. Instead of a
progress-regression model, the back and forth means that situations can
become increasingly violent and threatening as they continue.
This is significant for the fourth wave in multiple ways. The con-
versation around feminism and its activism has changed to
accommodate the evident back and forth within this specific tempor-
ality. At the same time that online feminists and their trolls are arguing,
the country is having to make changes to legislation to penalise those
who are guilty of online threats. Similarly, feminists are not only creating
campaigns, but offering commentary on the way the campaigns are
received and derided by those who oppose them. Feminism, as such,
has developed a form of self-consciousness, that while not preemptive,
allows for ongoing comment on the way backlash culture can take hold.
Women’s freedom is threatened and their identities undermined in
public places, a trend that seems to increase in direct relation to the
surge in feminist activism online. As such, the fourth wave is required to
converse not purely on the subject of women’s rights, but on the way the
fight is consistently undermined by men’s rights proponents and acti-
vists. Affectively, this has a huge impact on the way in which the fourth
wave is cohering. If, as Ahmed suggests, affects stick, then both the
positive and negative are adhering the feminist movement of this parti-
cular contemporary. The simultaneity of solidarity, shared spaces, quick-
result petitions, and then, death and rape threats, as well as anti-feminist
websites, creates a combination of both good and bad feeling. While the
good feelings work as mobilisers, with momentum and enthusiasm
moving activists to action, the bad feeling shores up the boundaries of
the wave activism. As opposed to the wave abating when legislative
progress has been achieved, it is in fact sustained by the ongoing and
continuous evidence of its necessity. While it is increasingly difficult to
measure feminist progress through changes in law, cultural attitudes
offer a good indication as to the position of women within a society.
As the Internet has cultivated a particularly virulent misogyny, it is
evident that feminism needs to maintain a very public presence.
The affects, then, are motivated strongly by resistance and difficulty.
Feminist activism is still responding to threats to women’s safety, and
attempting to change a culture of violence against women. It also refuses
to capitulate to any kind of simultaneous backlash, which has emerged
in direct response to the seeming progress being achieved by feminism.
As a result, the fourth wave temporality requires that activists engage
with negativity in the form of a conversation. In spite of the no
platforming, which I discuss in the next section, and accusations that
contemporary feminism might in part be defined by ‘silencing’, it is

actually a time of ongoing and increased debate. While this has spawned
the phrase ‘don’t feed the trolls’, discouraging women from engaging
with those who might bait them, either with provocations or violence,
there is a wider en masse response to the backlash against feminism. In a
sense, this particular aspect of the fourth wave is characterised by anger;
and most importantly, anger with quite an obvious and visible founda-
tion. This is then strengthened by the refusal to be cowed or intimi-
dated. While both anger and refusal might appear to be negative affects,
they are absolutely necessary for feminist resistance and progress. In this
fourth wave moment, activists are required not only to push for progress,
but to resist the simultaneous backlash that is clearly unfolding. While
anger might move feminists to action, it is the refusal that is necessary
for withstanding an onslaught of threat and online violence. These two
affects, working in conjunction with the more positive affects created
through connectivity and immediacy, allow for a fourth wave that is
dialogic, responsive and resistant.
End of Irony: Linguistic Strategies and Identity

Politics
The fourth wave is also notable for the way linguistic strategies have
changed. In All The Rebel Women, Cochrane notes that many of the
women she has spoken to see humour as central to an understanding of
the fourth wave (2014). However, she also clarifies that feminists should
never feel as if they have to resort to humour in order to make their
politics more palatable for a wider audience. The popularity of Caitlin
Moran’s How To Be a Woman (2011) is certainly testament to this trend,
with critics and fans praising the book on account of its levity.
Addressing both feminism and female identity, Moran gives a comic
account of burgeoning sexuality, slut shaming and motherhood, creating
a non-threatening feminism that can be appealing to a more mainstream
audience. However, it is difficult to make feminism appealing to the
masses, whilst simultaneously radical and focused on women’s rights.
Indeed, Ahmed’s ‘feminist killjoys’ encourages women to resist making

their feminism appealing. Rather, adhering to and championing the
politics necessitates embracing being in trouble. In certain situations, a
feminist will always be encoded as difficult, even before she has partici-
pated in the dialogue or spoken up. This difficulty is necessary for
questioning the status quo, challenging sexism, but also to ensure that
feminism does not lose its radical transformative power.
This problematic of humour and killing joy leads me to a considera-
tion of irony. Irony is often conceived of as related to humour; if you are
in on the joke, then it works as a humourous but also critical strategy
(Cochrane 2014). It demands that the recipient or listener has the same
frame of references and understanding as the speaker. Irony cannot be
successful if the audience fails to see it for what it is: a recasting or
reframing of an original utterance within a new context, for either
comedic or critical effect (Chamberlain 2014). In Words of Selves,
Riley suggests a mythical model for irony, drawing upon the figures of
Narcissus and Echo. It is no coincidence that Riley’s embodiment of
irony is female. In short, Echo is cursed to speak back the last words that
have been spoken to her. As such, she cannot formulate her own
sentences, expressions or thoughts, as she is condemned to repetition.
When Echo sees Narcissus and falls in love with him, it is this repetition
that prevents her from declaring love, and ensures that she just becomes
a perpetual repetition of his original utterances (2000: 161). This
suggests that irony operates entirely on a repeated action or phrase: the
original must be reframed within a new context, wherein the new
context changes the significance and meaning of the original (2000:
158). Thus, when Echo repeats Narcissus’ words, the original is trans-
formed by the fact that it exists anew, with a different register and a
different set of motivations for speaking. Irony formulated as an Echo is
useful for thinking through the way in which feminism might draw on it
as a linguistic strategy of resistance. Certainly, in the my discussion of
the slut walk, it is clear how reappropriated language can be simulta-
neously powerful and problematic.
The questions remain, then, of how irony might be useful for femin-
ism, and how its deployment can fail within a wider context. Primarily,
irony can serve as a strong and very simple critique. As opposed to
relying on rhetoric, academic language, political analysis, repeating an

original within a new context can reveal it as inherently flawed. For
example, when ‘slut’ was reframed by the marchers on the slut walk, it
was a case of ironising the original utterance of a police officer. Instead of
well-conceived and executed criticism, placing ‘slut’ in a new context not
only changed the meaning of the word, but forced a reflection on the
way it was initially used (Chamberlain 2014). Thus, irony as a model of
critique, not only transforms words’ possibilities for marginalised com-
munities, but it encourages critical scrutiny of the original’s existence.
The most effective example of this kind of reclamation is in the way the
‘queer’ community has taken on a term that has traditionally been used
in a derogatory way (Riley 2000). Through referring to themselves as
queer, although it is possible the term now has more academic reso-
nances than activist ones, the community undermined the negative
power of the term, while encouraging criticism of those who use it to
wound. The queer community appropriated a weapon of hurt, ironised
it and then deployed it in an entirely new fashion.
Irony, however, is not unproblematic. Its success is heavily reliant on
the listener understanding the reframing work of Echo. As such, irony is
totally contingent: the speaker has to reframe the original utterance
differently enough that an audience is able to understand the utterance’s
transformation (Riley 2000: 147). If, for example, ‘queer’ is deployed
within the wrong context, both the speaker and the word could be entirely
misunderstood. It might be that the speaker appears to be homophobic
and of the same ilk as those who originally used the phrase in a derogatory
sense. Thus, both the speaker and the listener can be misunderstood or
misconstrued through the ironic utterance. If the listener is not ‘in on the
joke’ or unable to see that a joke is unfolding, then the irony is lost
entirely. It has no effect for anyone other than the speaker, who has
already determined their opposition to that which they are critiquing.
The difficult nature of irony has perhaps best been exemplified by the
case of Bahar Mustafa and her alleged tweet including the hashtag ‘kill
all the white men’. Once more, this particular case is demonstrative of
how social media has become pivotal to the affects and activism of a
fourth wave moment of feminism. Mustafa was working as Goldsmith’s
Diversity Officer when she came under criticism for a number of ‘reverse
racist’ opinions.21 Initially, she attempted to organise an event on diversity

in which she encouraged BME and non-binary people to attend, as
opposed to white, cis men. This particular case, while not at all uncom-
mon in the organisation of diversity events, was escalated to the point that
national UK media covered the story.22 The coverage of this story formed
a strong basis for the later furor surrounding Mustafa having allegedly
used the hashtag ‘kill all white men’ on her Twitter account. At this point,
it is important to note that Mustafa has categorically denied ever using the
hashtag, and ultimately the case against her was dropped on account of a
lack of evidence.23 For the purposes of this chapter, I intend to analyse the
content of the alleged tweet to explore and explain how the irony of ‘kill
all white men’ is very contingent: it is person and context dependent.
Given the fact that national newspapers reported Mustafa’s tweet as if it
had existed, and indeed, the police even treated the tweet as ‘real’, I am
approaching the content based on the public’s perception of it having
actually happened. In an interview with Vice Magazine, Mustafa acknowl-
edged that the contentious hashtag did have some place within non-
binary, BME and feminist communities, which is why I believe it is
important to unpack the irony of the tweet’s inflammatory content.24
At the 2016 Oscars, Emma Thompson suggested that diversity might
be achieved if we were to kill all of the ‘old, white men’ who organise the
ceremony.25 There has been no backlash against Thompson, and she has
21
Mustafa’s statement ‘excluding’ white men from her diversity event was reported within a
number of national newspapers. The Guardian included a summary of the fall-out as well as the
petition instated to remove Mustafa from her post: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/
may/20/goldsmiths-racism-row-divides-students-bahar-mustafa.
22
National papers covering the story included the Daily Mail, Guardian, Standard, Huffington
Post, Vice magazine, The Independent and the Telegraph.
23
My focus in this chapter is not on whether Mustafa actually did tweet ‘kill all white men’.
Although she has released a statement about the trial and claimed, through an interview with Vice
magazine, that she never actually used the phrase, I am more interested in public outcry. The fact
that she was perceived to have written something so opposed to white men, and the resultant
widely reported police investigation is most important to the way that I am approaching irony.
24
For Mustafa’s claim, see her interview with Vice magazine: http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/
bahar-mustafa-exclusive-interview-893.
25
For Emma Thompson’s comments on the whiteness of the Oscars, see coverage by Vanity Fair:
http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/02/emma-thompson-oscars-so-white.
certainly not been called to stand before a jury on account of hate

speech. In fact, it seems as if her statement for the most part, has been
widely understood as irony. Of course a mob of white, middle-class,
Hollywood actresses are not going to go on a killing rampage, removing
all old, white, men from the boards and organisation committees of large
cultural events. Such a thing is impractical, unfeasible, and when
described in detail, comedic. Nevertheless, Thompson was making
exactly the same statement as Mustafa was alleged to have made; diver-
sity and discussions of diversity are hindered by the whiteness of institu-
tions, and possibly, the inflexibility of authorities who maintain that
whiteness. While Thompson has received no backlash on account of her
irony being understood by a wider audience, Mustafa – who had not
even written the alleged tweet – was almost prosecuted. Now, if face-
tiously, we were to take both threats seriously in relation to white, male,
safety, Thompson is a far greater threat. She occupies an international
platform, has a large fandom from which to draw, and finally, has the
financial resources to launch a mass-murder campaign. Mustafa, as a
student living in London, working primarily on diversity within her
student union, has neither the reach nor the resources to enable a
politically motivated killing spree.
Why, then, have the responses to the two women been so dispropor-
tionately different? It is important here to return to Riley’s model of
irony. Both Mustafa’s alleged tweet and Thompson are working with
irony in a way that requires greater complexity and nuance than Riley’s
model suggests. Neither woman is taking an original utterance and
reframing it in order to create irony: it is not a simple repetition with
an altered framework. However, as is evident from the responses to both
women, the success of the ironised utterance is still heavily reliant on
audience response. In the case of Mustafa, it was not purely that the
irony was lost, but that perhaps it was wilfully misconstrued, and far
more problematically, that the tweet itself was fabricated. So, if neither
Thompson nor Mustafa’s alleged tweet is following a model of Narcissus
and Echo, how then are they conveying irony through their statements?
Let us first consider Thompson, who it would seem, has been perceived
as less problematic than Mustafa. In stating that perhaps we should kill
all of the white men, Thompson was offering an ironic take on the
institution of the BAFTAs, which is simultaneously dependent on, and

subordinate, to white men. It was precisely the radical nature of her
statement that consolidated the irony: as an audience we appreciate
that she is not advocating murder, but we also recognise the need to
‘kill’ systems that facilitate exclusionary practices. The ‘old white men’,
then, become a synecdoche for the overhang of a historical practice of
prioritising male and white experience. Thus, Thompson’s hyperbolic
suggestion becomes ironic in that we realise that the bloody murder
will never take place, but that critique is still operating. Even if
Thompson does not follow the ironic model suggested by Riley, it is
similar in that her suggestion operates as critique of an original model.
Instead of reframing an utterance in order to ironise, Thompson is
creating a statement that is read as ironic against a background of old,
white, male dominance of culture, with a tacit understanding of her
social position.
If we consider what would have been the irony of Mustafa’s alleged
tweet, its formulation does not differ that much to Thompson’s state-
ment; it takes a system of intersecting powers and dominance as the
subject of irony. Instead of problematically reproducing the systemic
oppressions through repeating them directly, the statement totally sub-
verts the original model. Through refusing to repeat any original utter-
ance, as with the Narcissus and Echo model, the alleged hashtag focuses
on how diversity must not only create spaces in which it can thrive, but
also refuse to cooperate under white and patriarchal systems. ‘Kill all the
white men’ when used in an ironic sense, especially within activist
groups aware of its particular use, is not an invocation to rise up and
murder, but a statement that is made in relation to the taking down of
patriarchal and racist systems. Mustafa’s status as a woman of colour
complicates the phrase further. It is perhaps both her identity, in addi-
tion to her role as Diversity Officer, as well as the past prominence she
had gained in the National Press that led to the escalation of the alleged
‘kill all white men’ tweet. However, race does play a part in the way in
which ‘kill all white men’ can be further ironised as an utterance. The
body of a woman of colour is far more at risk than that of a white
woman, and so inevitably, activism stems from this sort of material and
lived experience (Gay 2014). In using ‘kill’, which is still extreme and
hyperbolic, the embodied risk of BME women is inverted, such that it is

projected onto the white male. It is ironic because the implicit threat of
violence is something that, for the most part, is not felt by white males.
The statement then, not only works as a critique of the model of male
dominance, it also foregrounds the way in which the white, male body is
less at risk than that of women and BMEs.
As I have stated previously, Thompson’s statement and then
Mustafa’s alleged, but non-existent, tweet elicited entirely different
public responses. I have also suggested earlier that Mustafa’s use of the
alleged hashtag is actually a far more complex use of irony than that of
Thompson. Unfortunately, however, the latter occupies a safe position
in which her identity and profession are so safely ensconced within the
white male privilege that she critiques, that there is no question of
whether her statement is ironic or not. It has to be. It is actually through
Mustafa’s position and politics up until that point, that her statement
was positioned as hate speech. By this I mean, that having received
national attention as a Diversity Officer who excluded white, cis, males,
the media was already predisposed to position her as an inflammatory
figure. Of course, this introduces a further layer of irony to the proble-
matic of irony within the fourth wave. ‘Hate speech’ has seen very few
prosecutions in the UK, particularly of men, in relation to their sexist or
misogynistic language. To see the term, which is intended to protect
minority groups, turned against a Diversity and Minorities officer is
‘ironic’ in the Riley sense. It takes a term that is intended to protect
minorities, and deploys it within a different context to that of the
original intention for the utterance. Mustafa, who focuses on the crea-
tion of safe spaces on campus, was prosecuted on account of her use of
‘hate speech’ against white males. Overlooking the fact that Mustafa did
not actually write the alleged tweet, a realisation which came very late in
regards to both the police and media, the problem is not that the
statement was uninformed, nor inciting hatred, but rather that it iro-
nised the fact that BME and female bodies are at far greater risk from
violence than those of white men.
This is not the only instance in which irony has proved itself proble-
matic for feminism. One of the tropes of postfeminism is the use of
irony – it acknowledges feminism in order to reiterate the fact that the
politics is no longer necessary. Through this acknowledgement, sexism

and misogyny can be claimed as ‘ironic’ on account of the nod to
feminism, before disregarding it. It also has a quality of the backlash,
which ‘charges feminists with the crimes it [wider society] perpetrates’
(Faludi 1991: 17). In this sense, the backlash would claim that it is the
fault of feminism that there is violence against women, for example.
These models of irony are different, however, to the experiences of
Mustafa. In a postfeminist understanding, irony is used to reinforce
further that feminism is over. In a backlash sense, we see how the
overarching aims of feminism can be used to demonise feminism. In
this case that means that feminism, highly concerned with anti-vio-
lence, equality and inclusivity, has created a woman intent on exclud-
ing able-bodied, white, heterosexuals from events, as well as doing
violence unto white men. Both cases demonstrate how feminism is
part of our cultural consciousness, and thus, allows us to move away
from it through derision and ridicule. In Mustafa’s case, however, her
irony was intentionally misunderstood and misconstrued, in an ironic
twist on ‘hate speech’ rhetoric.
The usage of irony within the fourth wave moment is symptomatic of
a wider phenomenon within this moment of feminist activism. Feminist
strategies are being wilfully misunderstood, or alternatively, wilfully
misused by those who are wishing to oppose feminist progress. This is
particularly evident in the case of ‘safe spaces’ and through the concept
of ‘no platforming’, which has long been practised in order to prevent
fascistic or offensive speakers from receiving both a stage and an audi-
ence for their opinions (Ahmed 2016). Simply speaking, no platform is
denying people the right to speak: they are not invited to events and they
are not hosted during panel discussions so that their view is not vocalised
to a wide audience. No platforming, now, is considered to be a hysterical
and emotional response on the part of less intellectually and politically
developed feminists; primarily, it is a form of activism attributed to
students (Ahmed 2016). However, most interestingly, is the misuse of
the term ‘no platforming’ to vilify feminist activists, as well as claiming
that their endorsement of ‘censorship’ is becoming damaging to wider
communities. Similar to the way irony has been misconstrued, such that
a 21-year-old student’s use of an established phrase within feminist
activism is understood as hate speech, no platforming to create safe space

has allegedly become a phenomenon of unsafe spaces for all. It has been
alleged that no platforming, as opposed to creating an open environment
in which all can participate without feeling marginalised, has in fact
introduced censorship and bullying into the feminist movement.
Interestingly, these accusations of no platforming as a form of bullying,
are only being wielded by the powerful with already-established
platforms.
This is affectively significant for the fourth wave of feminism in that it
has created an entirely different moment to that of the preceding waves.
Faludi wrote Backlash in response to regression after the second wave,
while critics such as McRobbie have identified ‘postfeminism’ as run-
ning concurrently to what others have described as a ‘third wave’ of
feminism. Here, it is not simply a case of ensuring that feminist progress
is undermined and ultimately pushed backwards, nor is it a canny
acknowledgement of feminism having ‘achieved its aims’ in order to
undermine it in a knowing fashion. Rather, it is taking some of the
central tropes of feminism and wielding them against the feminist
movement as a whole. This is not to say that the failure of ‘irony’ and
then the problematic of no platforming is uniformly agreed on within
the fourth wave of feminism itself. Certainly, there has been much
feminist debate about whether silencing opponents can ever be useful
in the ongoing campaign for progress.26 However, it is an interesting
moment in which tools of feminism, as in the right to block speakers, is
seen as an instrument of the politics’ failing. Within this fourth wave
moment, Both Julie Bindel and Peter Tachell have been blocked from
speaking at public events. In the latter’s case, a student declined an
invitation to sit on the same panel, citing objections to Tachell’s
26
Ahmed has written on this subject on her blog, Feminist Killjoys in a post titled ‘You are
Oppressing Us!’. She writes that: ‘Whenever people keep being given a platform to say they have
no platform, or whenever people speak endlessly about being silenced, you not only have a
performative contradiction; you are witnessing a mechanism of power’ (Ahmed 2016).
Ironically, after both Bindel and Tatchell were no platformed in March 2016, they were included
in a double spread in the Sunday Times with red tape over their mouths, discussing how their
voices were not being heard: http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/Magazine/Features/arti
cle1675950.ece.
positions on race and trans issues.27 While Bindel and Tachell, then,
were denied conversation in public forums, the article about their
silencing was published in The Independent. The attention that has
been given over to those who are ‘silenced’ creates quite the opposite
effect: when celebrities are ‘no platformed’, they are given national
platforms from which to speak about their experience of being silenced.
There is, in fact, no silence involved. This resonates with the way in
which Mustafa’s physical threats of violence were taken seriously, and
escalated to the point of court, while Emma Thompson’s were not.
There are some tools of feminism, in this case, irony and refusing
conversation, that have been twisted, resulting in a complicated relation-
ship of enforced silence and public accusations of silencing that resound
loudly through the media.
This demonstrates a particular difficulty for this fourth wave moment,
in which linguistic strategies are either no longer working effectively, or
are being intentionally misconstrued. Mustafa is an example of how, in
spite of postfeminism’s claims, irony as a feminist strategy can be
twisted. Similarly, some of the terms and forms of activism associated
with grassroots empowerment, are now seen as bullying and silencing.
Ironically, of course, it is the people whose voices can be heard loudest
that are being ‘silenced’ through no platforming. This creates a tension
at the heart of the fourth wave, in which there is no uniformity of
strategy: silencing is being appropriated, no platforming is being posi-
tioned as disempowering and irony is being wilfully misunderstood.
Similarly, there are problems between grassroots and student-led
activism, and that which is represented to a wider mainstream media
by those who find a platform within it. The difficulty of language
continues to play out in this moment, calling for greater sensitivity
simultaneous to increased derision both inside and outside the feminism
movement. There is a sense, then, that feminism still has a double
standard in which specific voices are prioritised over others. There is
27
Fran Cowling, the LGBT representative of the National Union of Students, said that Tatchell
had made both transphobic and racist comments in the past. For further information on the
alleged snub, read the following article: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/feb/13/
peter-tatchell-snubbed-students-free-speech-veteran-gay-rights-activist.
also a feeling that while no platforming, irony and silence might enable
some feminists with less authority to gain control of their politics, it can
be easily torn apart by feminists with larger platforms, and people
outside the movement looking to criticise the ‘PC’ brigade.
Conclusion
This chapter has considered a number of key campaigns and moments
significant to this fourth wave affective temporality. Everyday Sexism has
innovated archival practices, making evident the ways that our current
technology is transforming feminist praxis. Not only are feminists able
to communicate with one another with greater rapidity, but there is a
forum in which a range of voices can be heard, irrespective of back-
ground or lifestyle. Twitter and Facebook facilitate conversations that
can form the basis for online archives, as well as creating feelings of
solidarity. Everyday Sexism is easy to participate in: it only requires
access to the Internet in order to read, or submit. Documentation is thus
collated quickly, and archives are populated with a sense of immediacy:
everyday experience can actually gain some traction. When placed in
dialogue with numerous other incidents, all testament to the same kind
of experiences, it is impossible to ignore the grinding and heavy burden
of small incidents of sexism.
However, as my work on trolling culture, through the bank note
argument, demonstrated, online spaces are not entirely utopian. While
there was initially hope that the Internet might allow for forms of
interaction in which gender and sex are rendered irrelevant, there is a
sense that online identities have further amplified difference. The
anonymity afforded by social media and email addresses ensures that
misogyny, threats, violence and trolling are able to thrive. In fact, the
lack of identity often emboldens people to attack one another with
greater aggression and violence than would be possible in the real
world. That said, this form of online engagement is having an impact
on the external world, with some feminists being forced from their
homes, or to take out restraining orders, when the trolling has become
especially virulent.
The Slut Walk and Bahar Mustafa demonstrate the fourth wave’s
difficult relationship with language. The former is interested in reappro-
priating sexual slurs in order to liberate women, as well as contesting
rape culture, while the latter demonstrates that the terms of feminism are
being wilfully misconstrued or used against the social movement. The
fourth wave might try to position itself as a time of exploding signifiers,
but actually, it contributes to the ongoing battle between feminism and
general language use, in which specific terms and gendered insults must
be continually questioned and challenged. More importantly, Mustafa’s
case surrounding irony demonstrates that some bodies are still at greater
risk, even if they seem to have found a home within feminism. White,
able-bodied and middle-class women are still at less risk in certain forms
of protest, while BME activists are taking on far greater difficulties. Both
Mustafa’s experience, and the race reading of the Slut Walk in America
show that in spite of this contemporary’s aspiration to intersectionality
and equality, there are still great lacks and absences.
Finally, I have looked at the power of brands and their relation to
fourth wave feminism within a neoliberal context. This moment repre-
sents an uneasy alliance with corporations, which are able to mobilise or
not, depending on what they perceive to be at stake. In my specific
example, a number of brands pulled their advertising from Facebook
until the corporation agreed to take a stronger stance against pages that
endorsed or celebrated violence against women. However, there were
some brands that have a strong relationship with an almost entirely
female consumer base, such as Dove, who refused to remove their
advertising from the site. While Dove opted to write a letter to
Facebook, calling their monitoring practices into question, they did
not want to lose a potential relationship or advertising space through
decisive action. As my section on neoliberalism and feminism in the age
of capital suggests, it is difficult now to conceive of activism that is not in
some way engaged, or preoccupied with, corporations and brands. While
I’ve mostly celebrated the use of online forums for communication, it is
necessary not to overlook that Facebook and Twitter are both huge
corporations. In spite of the unease it might inspire, mainstream and
efficacious feminism can be required to capitulate to the demands of
corporations, and attempt to harness the lobbying power of brands.
Whether this will ultimately contribute further to the neoliberal envir-

onment, or simply allow feminism to coexist with it, is difficult to
determine.
All of the specific cases explored within this chapter contribute
different affects to this fourth wave temporality. Moving away from
the basic emotions as outlined in my chapter on affect, here we have a
complex and continually moving affective environment, in which fem-
inism’s action is informing feeling, while feeling in turn fuels feminist
activism. Converging affects do not always complement one another
either: while Everyday Sexism might create positive feelings of empow-
erment and visibility, the pure volume of submissions also communi-
cates a sense of hopelessness in the face of an overwhelming obstacle.
Similarly, the new approach to the archive might create a sensitivity and
responsiveness that has hitherto not existed in feminism, but the trolling
that is facilitated by online spaces adds a sense of risk, fear and inescap-
ability. These multiple affects emerge purely when addressing online
spaces. When these are considered with the irony, anger and sense of
injustice that fuel “kill all white men”, in conjunction with fear and
apologies that accompany the backlash against such statements, there is a
seething mass of feeling at work. Relationships with brands, in the
meantime, foster more feelings of solidarity: being cared for, represented
and defended through international advertising campaigns and powerful
corporations is in some way reassuring. Unfortunately, there is a sense
that corporations make use of feminism in order to sell, and by exten-
sion, protest certain issues that will reflect well on brand identity.
Instead, then, of a pure sense of empowerment and protection, feminists
also become total consumers, complicit in the way that corporations can
make use of the politics for their own ends.
The affects are complex, contradictory, entwined with one another
and in no sense mutually exclusive. As I have suggested in previous
chapters, in-fighting within feminism is incredibly useful. It fosters a
sense of debate and ensures that there is continual dissent, as opposed to
an established party line from which no one can deviate. It is not, then,
that each wave has been defined by its own strongly affective identity.
The first wave is not characterised by a patriotic and English impulse
towards equality, while the second wave is not informed by a desire for
freedom and a yearning for greater sexual emancipation. Rather, it might

be that the waves are actually created through the intensity of a whole
range of converging affects. The affects, in spite of their contradictory and
competing nature, work together to create a feeling intensity which fuels
feminism both internally and externally. These affects also influence the
social, political and cultural context from which the wave of feminism
emerges, resulting in yet more coalescing affects. At some point, as
explored with ACT UP, the affective intensity of the temporality will
no longer be able to sustain itself. That is not to say that the affects
dissipate totally, or disappear, but that the subjects who are cohered
through the convergence no longer have the energy to continue.
Similarly, affects themselves might lose energy: what begins as anger can
evolve into disappointment, can evolve into defeat. Waves are not distinct
from continued and on-going feminism, but simply constitute a time in
which the unique constellation of affect creates an intensity that serves as a
surge, galvanising feminist action for a finite period of time.
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6
Feminist Futurities
Given my emphasis on uncertainty within nascent social movements, it

would be contradictory to predict the future of the fourth wave. If the
previous waves are any indication, however, this incarnation will lose
momentum and at some point dissipate, with long-term campaigns and
grassroots charities continuing their everyday work. In spite of this, the
turn towards the future is still an important one to enact; it maintains
the dialogue between the unfolding moment of activism and then
feminism’s continued aspirations. In doing so it allows for a simultaneity
of temporalities that is central to the politics’ affective surges. This
fourth wave moment, while characterised by a surge in activity and
activism, still has some aspects and elements that do not neatly coincide
with this moment. By this I mean that certain events and campaigns,
while contributing to the intensity of the contemporary, have an affec-
tive charge that will continue long after this convergence has begun to
dissipate. These considerations will be placed in dialogue with the
incidents and campaigns discussed in my previous chapter. While
Mustafa’s experience does not necessarily have futurity in a widespread
and public sense, its impact is important in terms of intersectionality and
irony. The ‘Slut Walk’ has already ceased to continue within the UK,

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53682-8_6
demonstrating that this particular campaign was short-lived. This is not

to undermine its affect, but to appreciate that activism can arise in
response to short-term problems, with short-term aims. In some cases,
activism begins as a response or as a protest, without necessarily estab-
lishing a series of objectives. This places the activism ‘with time’ in the
contemporary, aware of its finite potential, and short lifetime. This
seems to be a difficulty for Everyday Sexism, where visibility is the
primary motivation driving the archive. Once international visibility
has been achieved, how does the organisation sustain its energy and
movement?
In critiquing this fourth wave moment then, particularly the cam-
paigns I have looked to, I will turn to the question of intersectionality
within feminism. My particular focus will be on problems of race within
the politics. As my chapter on temporality outlined, numerous writings
on WoC and black feminism have considered their social movements as
‘out of time’ with those of the mainstream, white feminism (Thompson
2002; Fernandes 2010). If this is the case, then how does the fourth
wave moment speak to an out of timeliness, while attempting to practise
increased intersectionality? Certainly, it would seem as if intersectional
politics is being claimed particularly for the third and fourth wave.
Evans’ work makes a case of intersectionality being pivotal to third
wave identity, while Cochrane claims that increased openness actually
characterises this fourth wave moment. In spite of the claims being made
for intersectionality, both long-established and contemporary, there are
still ongoing problems of race within feminism. This, more recently, has
extended to difficulties around the inclusion of trans women. While race
and trans issues are distinctly different from one another, they do trouble
the intersectionality being claimed for the current and previous wave.
What might these issues suggest for time, and what demands do they
place on the future of feminism?
Ultimately, I will go on to address two factors central to any affective
temporality: the potential divisions of feminism, and, the external eco-
nomic, social and cultural climate. Feminism has always been comprised
of groups, each with slightly different emphasis or focus, ensuring that
the social movement remains diverse and multiple. While this can be
incredibly effective and useful for maintaining a sense of internal
critique, it can also lead to strong division which deters from the
momentum of a wave’s affective temporality. In the intensity of an
affective surge, these divisions might not appear as fundamental to the
politics, but as the rush of the moment starts to slow, they become
increasingly evident and problematic. I will ask what kind of divisions
might come to characterise the fourth wave, and how, ultimately, they
might lead to a dissipation of the affective intensity sustaining this
moment. A wave’s affective temporality is largely constituted by the
society to which it is responding, and it is possible that the fourth wave
has been consolidated through the UK’s current economic climate, in
particular austerity measures (Cochrane 2014; Evans 2015). Cuts to
women’s services as well as a decrease in benefits has had a dispropor-
tionate effect on women, making a surge in feminism increasingly
necessary. However, as this becomes status quo, or more optimistically,
subject to change, the affects of the fourth wave will also alter, possibly
diminishing the intensity and cohesion that they have hitherto main-
tained. I will return to the importance of uncertainty in regards to the
contemporary of feminism, arguing that the inability to predict the
future, coupled with an emphasis on ‘becoming’ is necessary to allow
affects and the wave moment to take shape. Furthermore, this approach
proposes a methodology for scholarship that allows for the uncertainty
of the present moment to prevail. Rather than offering an overview, or
retrospective analysis, there is an element of responding to the demands
of the contemporary while still acknowledging its contingencies.
The Fourth Wave: Trajectories and Longevities

Even within the fourth wave period, the Slut Walk, which had such
international momentum, no longer takes place in the UK. After two
years, in which the second march was badly attended, efforts to organise
another have disappeared. It could seem problematic to have used this as
a prime example of the fourth wave, claiming that its affects are parti-
cularly useful in light of this unique temporality. However, it demon-
strates that individual events and campaigns can contribute to the whole,
even if they ultimately fade from significance. The Slut Walk is
important for thinking about the ways that certain issues transcend
transatlantic divide, to the point that a comment made on a campus
in Canada served as the catalyst for hundreds of women to take to the
streets in the UK. What the Slut Walk shows is the ease of identification
with this particular incident. Removing the specificities of both Canada
and the campus, what the Slut Walk responded to was the way that our
justice systems, from the police upwards, still seem to view women as
culpable for sexual violence perpetrated against them. Although more
rapes are being reported than ever in the UK, demonstrating a shift in
cultural attitudes that empowers women to go to the police, the convic-
tion rate is still lacking.1 Furthermore, we have not quite escaped female
culpability, as demonstrated through high-profile cases such as that of
Ched Evans, where the victim’s intoxication and consenting to sex with
a different Sheffield United player that same evening, have been posi-
tioned as indications of willingness.2 While the Slut Walk might have
disappeared, then, it links very much to the increased interest surround-
ing sexual assault and culpability.
The fourth wave period has also coincided, and consequently been
fuelled by, revelations about celebrities such as Jimmy Saville, as dis-
cussed in my previous chapter. This case has made evident that people in
positions of power, or working for influential and wealthy corporations,
are not held accountable for the abuse that they perpetrate. While
Saville’s systemic abuse of hundreds of people is not analogous to
individual incidents of rape and sexual assault, the UK’s legal approach
to both situations is similar: the perpetrator’s culpability is often less
1
Rape Crisis reports that only 15% of rape victims report the crime to the police: http://rapecrisis.
org.uk/statistics.php. In 2015, rape was up on the previous year by 29%, which police believe
indicated victims’ increased willingness to come forward, as opposed to an increase in the crime
itself: http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/crimei
nenglandandwales/yearendingdecember2015. Although there was a 9.9% increase in conviction
for rape on the previous year, the rate fell overall, given the increase in reported crimes: http://
www.cps.gov.uk/news/latest_news/highest_ever_numbers_of_violence_against_women_cases_
being_prosecuted_and_convicted_in_england_and_wales/.
2
In the case of Ched Evans, his victim’s identity has been revealed three times, which contravenes
the victim’s right to anonymity. The victim has been named by fans of Evans who resent the
impact that conviction has had on his football career. The victim has been found, trolled and
abused by people who believe that the sexual encounter was her fault.
than the victim’s guilt. While the prosecutions enabled by Yew Tree are
now calling perpetrators to account, the fact that a number of national
institutions allowed for the abuse to go ahead without question, demon-
strates how little historic protection there has been for victims of sexual
abuse. This seems to resonate strongly with cases in Rochester and
Oxfordshire, where young girls who are from vulnerable backgrounds,
or are in the foster care system, have been groomed by gangs of men.3
Victims’ parents were told by social services that their children, who
were all under legal age at that point, were making lifestyle choices as
opposed to being systematically abused.4 It is in this culture, and a
period of revelation of decades-old cover-ups of abuse, that the contesta-
tion of female culpability seems especially pertinent.
However, the Slut Walk also speaks to another aspect of culture; the
increasing sexualisation of women, paired with an ongoing judgement of
promiscuity amongst women. While the Slut Walk was initially in
response to the way that the police force dealt with problems of sexual
assault, it also relates to the idea that sexually active women are often
associated with being a ‘slut’. In fact, there are a number of derogatory
terms that are used for women that are never applicable to men (Valenti
2008). The Slut Walk, in an embodied sense, was protesting the idea of
labels being applied to people in an attempt to condemn their behaviour.
It recognised that the word slut is harmful, both in justifying sexual
assault on women, but also as a term reserved for women who are
perceived as wearing the wrong thing, or being sexually active.
Through the multiple attendees of the march, the word slut was unteth-
ered from its cultural meaning, and came to represent a range of people
3
A report into the Oxfordshire sex rings, commissioned by Maggie Blyth, stated how the children
involved were often subjected to snide remarks from professionals, who deemed relationships
between 13-year-old girls and grown men to be ‘age appropriate’, while also claiming that girls of
14 were not only consenting, but the aggressors, in sexual encounters with the men involved:
http://www.oscb.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/OSCBPressReleaseFINAL.pdf. In 2014, Greater
Manchester Police & Crime Commissioner Tony Lloyd called for a report on the problem of
child exploitation. Ann Coffey prepared the report, which indicates that one of the issues with
children reporting is that females are seen as complicit as opposed to victims: http://www.gmpcc.
org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/81461-Coffey-Report_v5_WEB-single-pages.pdf.
4
For further evidence of this, see Labour List reporting here: http://labourlist.org/2015/03/the-
harsh-uncomfortable-truths-about-child-abuse-in-oxfordshire-and-rotherham/.
and experiences. In the current climate, it is difficult to protest the

ubiquity of a ‘pornified’ culture (Valenti 2008; Long 2012; Levy
2005). Unsurprisingly then, protestors turned towards the social double
standard: media, advertising and the film and porn industry can treat
women as sexual, objects, but women cannot autonomously determine
their outfits and sex lives without judgement. The march, then, existed
as a short-lived protesting of the sexualised culture in conjunction with
distrust of women’s sexual autonomy, as well as the problematic of a
systemic disregard of sexual assault victims. The Slut Walk wholly
protested the concept of the ‘appropriate’ woman: by this, I mean, a
woman who is considered sexually pure, perhaps even abstinent, as well
as the ‘right’ kind of victim (one who did nothing that suggests a kind of
‘asking for it’).
Everyday Sexism seems similarly linked to this affective temporality,
with a set of objectives that correlate directly to the fourth wave.
Whether it will continue long term is open to debate, however. In
spite of this tension of longevity, Everyday Sexism’s founder has been
propelled into the spotlight as representative of this contemporary
moment’s feminist activism. Importantly, Bates has taken her initial
archiving project and turned it into a book entitled Everyday Sexism.
There, she extends the work of collecting and collating, writing more
expansively about a culture of sexism ranging from the classroom to the
boardroom. Bates’ book, however, argues that incidents of sexism con-
stitute the less serious end of a spectrum in which violence against
women, and dismissal of women within all spheres of life, are seen as
acceptable and almost inevitable. Extending her work, means that Bates’
career and role as a spokeswoman might have much greater longevity
than Everyday Sexism. As I have discussed, the organisation creates an
archive of female experience, ranging from serious sexual assault to much
more common street harassment. The archive is contained, for the most
part, on Twitter. This particular site allows for rapid response and easy
accessibility, both in terms of those who are contributing, and those who
are browsing. The aim of the archive is to document a range and volume
of experiences of sexism to demonstrate how encounters of that nature
are not exceptional, and that they are regular enough to taint a female
experience of wider society. Bates quite rightly outlines that one of the
difficulties of discussing sexism is that individual cases are seen as

exceptional, and that women are encouraged to ignore these things.
Through the positioning of sexism, particularly aggressive attacks in
public places, as exceptional, and a general culture of ‘overlooking’,
there is no sense of how pervasive sexism is. Everyday Sexism addresses
the cumulative and wide-reaching effects of sexism, partly responding to
problems of invisibility.
Archives of affects can contain a range of feeling, from unhappiness to
the numbness of disbelief. An archive’s ‘feelings may belong to one
nation or many, and they are both intimate and public. They can
make one feel totally alone, but in being made public, they are revealed
to be part of a shared experience of the social’ (Love 2007: 286). The
archive created through Everyday Sexism demonstrates how the feelings
of individuals are actually applicable to many: it serves as a forum for
identifiable experience. Love also writes that alternative archives, ones
formed through ephemera and feeling, allow for subcultures or counter-
cultures to become recognised. Although the archives might exist slightly
out of the mainstream and be comprised of feeling and non-official
documents, they help to counter dominant narratives. In this way, they
challenge what makes history, suggesting that alternative stories and
people have existed invisibly within time periods. While working with
the issues of invisibility, similar to that of Everyday Sexism, there is an
ongoing problem of who and what makes history. As I explored in my
chapter on temporality, history is a construct. It does not offer a
comprehensive overview of the past, but rather represents specific narra-
tives, types of people and experiences that are deemed worthy of doc-
umentation. The difficulty in the everyday, is that even if it has been
archived comprehensively on Twitter, how could it be considered sig-
nificant enough to become history? Even within the history of feminism,
as told through a series of legal and social achievements, how can the
day-to-day experience of cat calling, harassment, sexism in the work
place, misogynistic jokes compare? Not only does it seem comparatively
insignificant to landslide or well-publicised cases, but it also seems
unimportant next to significant progress. How can the history of femin-
ism also carry a history of women’s everyday experience? Is it possible for
the social movement to make space for such multiplicity, regularity and
commonality? While feminism as a movement is, of course, inextricably

linked with the everyday lives of women, it is still difficult for the history
of feminism to accommodate the masses of day-to-day experiences that
makes its existence necessary.
So, while Bates’ work as a figurehead for younger women might be
extremely important, as is her work touring schools to discuss the
pressures of a patriarchal society, it might be that her archive remains
fixed within this affective temporality. While it is still documenting and
retweeting incidents of Everyday Sexism, it has become saturated with a
sameness. As a result, the site now seems to be far more engaged with the
volume and ubiquity of experiences of sexism as opposed to the actual
experiences themselves. Given the amount of press that the site and
venture received as a whole, it is safe to say that Bates has made visible
what was previously an invisible problem of female experience. In fact,
many men have written to the site in testament to this fact, stating that
they had never truly been aware of the problem of street harassment and
so on, until they had looked at the continual and seemingly unending
news feed provided by Everyday Sexism.5 If the site has received national
attention, then, and raised awareness of experiences of sexism, what can
happen next? At what point does the archive stop being a form of
activism and actually just become a home for documentation?
Once the invisible has been made visible, there seems to be a demand
for activism to change. The contemporary, in this case, must embrace the
obscurity of unfolding action to address issues that are being brought to
light. Having achieved the objective of making a wider audience aware of
the impact of Everyday Sexism, the archive can now form the basis of
larger campaigns or attempts to change legislation. While the archive and
shared experience of solidarity has empowered women to shout back, or
even report harassers, it needs to progress beyond that point. This is not to
undermine Everyday Sexism’s achievement: the first and probably most
important part of resolving issues is forcing them to be recognised. That
said, what does the future of the archive hold? While Everyday Sexism
5
Read Laura Bates discussing the subject here: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/
womens-blog/2014/mar/14/men-fight-against-everyday-sexism-gender-inequality.
itself might become a part of history, will the individual experiences and
testimonies of the women who have contributed be given the same
attention? It is my contention that within this fourth wave, Everyday
Sexism has contributed vital affects of frustration, inevitability, as well as
feelings of solidarity. Furthermore, it has provoked surprise and horror in
people who were not aware that sexism was such a day-to-day problem. In
working between personal experience and then the wider social, Everyday
Sexism has also mirrored the passage of affect, taking the embodied feeling
of the individual and turning it outwards, so that the associated feelings
become part of a collective. Now that this affect is in the social world,
however, and has created feelings of solidarity, it needs to begin moving in
a different way. If that kind of movement does not take place, then it will
not be surprising if the affects lose their momentum.
The Facebook Rape Campaign highlights a development in the proble-
matic relationship between feminism and capital. During the process of
writing this book, Sandberg has released a statement acknowledging that
her book Lean In (2014) overlooked some vital and fundamental aspects of
intersectional feminism. Having lost her husband, and started working as a
single parent, Sandberg states that she has become aware of the difficulty of
single motherhood, and how such difficulties are hugely exacerbated by a
lower socio-economic position.6 In acknowledging her privilege, which
was previously twofold, in the form of a large income and a supportive
husband, Sandberg has affirmed what other feminists have argued: accu-
mulating wealth is not necessarily a feminist act (Foster 2016). While it
could be argued that Sandberg’s professional ascension, her visibility within
a tech company, and her matching men in terms of seniority and earning
capacity are feminist, a large salary can negate problems faced by everyday
women outside of corporate life. As such, Sandberg’s most recent statement
is not revelatory, even if it has come from high up on a corporate ladder. In
fact, intersectional feminism has long been discussing the relationship
between all forms of oppression, addressing the impact of class and
economic position on women’s rights. Sandberg is important, perhaps,
6
Sandberg posted her statement on Mother’s Day of 2016: https://www.facebook.com/sheryl/
posts/10156819553860177
for quite publically recognising that her book on corporate feminism

overlooked a vital aspect of the politics: that of empowering all women.
There is no doubt that feminism’s relationship with capital will
continue. It is not just that brands have recognised that espousing
feminism can increase their consumer base, but that feminists, in turn,
have recognised the occasional utility of brand power. This is not to say
that the relationship between the social movement and capital will not
be fraught. As Dove demonstrated in the Facebook Rape Campaign,
while women might form a useful part of their consumer market, when
it came to withdraw their advertisement from Facebook, they were not
willing to make that commitment for women’s rights. In this particular
moment, while brands seem to be harnessing feminism in order to sell
products, their relationship with the social movement still contributes to
the affects of fourth wave feminism. There is a sense of simultaneity
where the brands allow for women to feel empowered, both within a
personal sense, but also in a public sphere too. Using brands in the
Facebook Rape campaign secured a favourable outcome: the social
media site was required to change its policy as well as take down a
number of the offensive pages. However, this does change the fact that
advertising, corporations and branding exploit women when it is most
expedient for them. Advertising is inherently sexist (Aune and Redfern
2010; Banyard 2010), corporations inevitably benefit from the pay gap,
and the discrimination still faced by mothers in the workplace (Equality
and Human Right’s Commission 2015) actually indicate that the rela-
tionship between feminism and corporations is not as harmonious as the
Facebook Rape Campaign might suggest.
This leads me onto a consideration of the Internet’s centrality to the
fourth wave of feminism. While it might just be considered a new
platform by some, the Internet has changed the way in which feminists
are able to organise and communicate, which in turn, contributes a
different kind of feeling to the affects that are converging within this
particular temporality. Much like the fourth wave’s relationship with
brands, however, the Internet provides similar amounts of ease and
difficulty. Here, I want to focus especially on the Internet as problematic
for feminism, particularly given Penny’s assertion that having an opinion
makes women easy targets for trolling and abuse (2013). Within this
contemporary, I have suggested that the Internet has collapsed timelines:

it is no longer the case that a wave of feminism will occur, and then the
backlash will inevitably follow. Rather, it seems as if the Internet is
accelerating this process such that the backlash is happening simultaneous
to this wave of feminism, and rather than slowing its progress or even
reversing some of its achievements, it is serving to fuel ongoing debate.
Certainly, national responses to specific trolling cases, especially in relation
to Criado-Perez, has resulted in feminism receiving far more media and
press space than it might have otherwise. The Internet, then, is creating a
temporal conflation in which the Faludi model of progressive intense
feminist surges followed by an equally intense backlash, is no longer
applicable. While this has been useful for fuelling feminism, it means
that the fourth wave of the social movement has been married to an
environment of abuse, fear, and a sense of invasion, in which it is almost
impossible to withdraw from the far-reaching Internet. This has created a
whole new, and still developing, set of dangers for women. Ranging from
very basic Twitter trolling, to the publication of women’s addresses online,
to the explosion of revenge porn, the Internet has created a forum in
which misogyny can expand and develop. The difficulty is that the
Internet allows for anonymity, which can be empowering for women
looking to move beyond their sex and gender, but also enables trolls to
continue campaigns of abuse without any chance of retribution.
It is difficult to anticipate how this relationship between the fourth
wave, its backlash and the Internet may develop, especially once the
affective charge of this feminist contemporary has abated. Will the
Internet still constitute a space of engaged and flourishing activism?
Will misogynistic spaces such as 4Chan thrive as the feminist surge
diminishes, and will there be a return of pages with sexist content to
social media websites such as Facebook?7 As with everything in this
7
4chan is a range of anonymous forums that allow for any kind of material to be posted. They
have been instrumental in disseminating naked photos of female celebrities, often taken without
consent, as well as encouraging swathes of participants to bully specifically targeted feminist
activists. 4chan is notable for its especially anti-feminist outlook, with a number of schemes (such
as piss for equality) where they have created faux social media activism in the hope that women
will humiliate themselves through participation.
chapter, the relationship between the Internet and feminism is difficult

to imagine in the future. In part, this is due to the ever-changing nature
of the online world: I cannot anticipate trends that will go on to dictate
users’ behaviours. Social media usage fluctuates, with dramatic increases
in the use of Facebook and Twitter at the offset, which plateaued, and
has now begun to decrease (Farmer 2014). With a movement towards
more visual modes of engagement such as Pinterest and Instagram, there
are all kinds of potential expansions for online feminism (Farmer 2014).
In addition to this, it would be difficult to anticipate the impact of waves
and backlashes being conflated, such that a timeline of progress is no
longer understood through two-steps-forward, one-step-back. Within
this current moment, a meeting of feminists with trolls has ensured
that social movement is fuelled through anger, righteousness and retalia-
tion. However, trolls are being similarly fuelled by the feminist response,
and their outpouring of threat and hatred will inevitably have a high cost.
Both the Slut Walk and Mustafa’s case demonstrate the ongoing
engagement with language. Feminism, as a movement, has long been
highly concerned with the way language works, reiterating and reinfor-
cing oppressive social structures (Butler 2008; Riley 2005). There is a
recognition that gendered language holds numerous associations, the
majority of which place female alongside the weak and pathetic. It is
my belief that this contestation in the site of language will not change
as feminism moves into a future. In the movement away from legisla-
tive innovation and change, focus shifts towards catalysing cultural
progress. This culture seems to be one that is anti-women, with
advertising emphasising bodies; female characters rarely featuring in
films unless they are a girlfriend or a wife (Mayer 2015); the almost
uniform use of derogatory language towards women in pornography
(Bridges et al. 2010); and the slang language such as ‘pussy’ or ‘cunt’
that equates weakness and badness with femaleness. The culture, then,
in which women are positioned as other through language needs
continual challenges.
Mustafa, however, poses a slightly different problem. While I used her
experience as a means by which to explore irony in the fourth wave, her
case also speaks to a failure of intersectionality. Mustafa was not cri-
tiqued and criticised widely by feminists – the majority of criticism
levelled at her was initially from those insulted by her hashtag usage (the
straight, white, male). However, Thompson’s ability to make a similar
point from an international platform, and be understood as a woman
with a heightened sense of irony, points to the fact that a number of
feminists are less at risk than others. A male feminist defending the
politics (while he might be critiqued for appropriation) tends to be safer
than the female body, which can be subjected to gender-specific threats
of sexual violence. Similarly, the queer feminist is at greater risk than the
straight feminist, in the same way that it is still difficult for disabled
feminists to access a number of events and campaigns as compared to
their able-bodied counterparts. The fact that Mustafa and Thompson
could be treated so differently, goes to show that feminism is not
accommodating these differences to the best of its ability. Similar to
Sandberg’s revelation that women of lower socio-economic status are not
able to lean in, feminism still needs to address intersectionality, such that
there is a continued support and recognition of the fact that some bodies
are more at risk than others.
The Problem with Waves: Fourth Wave

Feminism and Intersectionality
WoC and black feminist groups have historically felt a sense of being
‘out of time’, in which their specific activism was being effaced by not
having coincided neatly with the timeframe of waves (Fernandes 2010).
In looking to case studies of the fourth wave of feminism, with the
exception of Mustafa, I have been addressing campaigns and organisa-
tions that are for the most part run and faced by white women. Bates
and Criado-Perez, while not to undermine the excellent work they are
doing, seem akin to the Baumgardner type of feminist that Western
media love to report on. At this moment, then, I want to take the
opportunity to discuss the campaigns that I see as vital to feminism,
contributing to the affectivity of this moment, but also bound to outlast
the surge of affect that will sustain the fourth wave. While these cases do
not make up part of my in-depth consideration of the fourth wave, they
are still contributing to the energy and diversity of the moment.

However, as I have mentioned, it seems that some campaigns impor-
tantly situate themselves outside of the timeframes of feminist waves,
ensuring that work continues on a grassroots level in order to effect long-
term cultural and social change.
Nimco Ali has been working tirelessly in the UK, as a campaigner for
female genital mutilation, which culminated in her establishing the
charity Daughters of Eve with Leyla Hussein in 2010. Since then, the
two activists have created a huge amount of attention for FGM as an
issue, manifesting in a Channel 4 series called The Cruel Cut in 2014, as
well as coverage in all major UK-based newspapers. There are a number
of reasons for Ali to coincide well with the affects that I am associating
with the fourth wave temporality. Having established her charity in
2010, she began to discuss her own experiences as a survivor of FGM
in 2012. This shift to the use of ‘I’ prevented Ali from maintaining a
façade of distance from her campaigning, and has allowed for her to
launch a more emotive campaign. Here, much like with the Slut Walk
and Everyday Sexism, personal experience becomes vital to success and
wider public interest. Ali’s use of ‘I’ was not only important in terms of
empowering other women, but served as an important connection
between cultural practices, violence against women, the need for govern-
ment innovation and the real lives of actual embodied women. Both Ali
and Hussein speak to the fourth wave in that a significant proportion of
their raising awareness has occurred within an online forum: both are
prolific on Twitter, using the forum to champion ‘fanny forwardness’ as
a form of politics. However, once more parallel to the fourth wave surge,
Ali and Hussein have also experienced a huge online backlash, with
numerous rape and death threats emerging particularly after their
Channel 4 programme aired. Finally, on the Daughters of Eve website,
the charity states that their aim is to provide FGM-specific help in order
to fill ‘the vacuum in services for young people’.8 This resonates very
strongly with the idea that Conservative austerity might be key to
8
For further information on Daughter’s of Eve see their ‘About’ page here: http://www.dofeve.
org/about-us.html.
creating an environment in which the affects of feminism would inten-

sify, and surge.
However, there is also a strong sense of departure from this con-
temporary of the fourth wave. While Daughters of Eve might resonate
with trolling, online activism, rapidity and grassroots organising, their
work has a much longer future. As such, Daughters of Eve, while being
established within a fourth wave moment, has not been galvanised by
the surge in feminist activism at this time. The vacuum in services for
young people quite rightly identified by Hussein and Ali, has always
been the case when it comes to FGM. It is not as if there were once
provisions that have been cut, but instead, a total absence of legislation
and recommended responses for the emergency services. In that sense,
then, Ali and Hussein are not building on an established, Western
historical problem, such as Everyday Sexism or gendered pay discre-
pancies, but demanding that multicultural Britain respond to a specific
and urgent issue. Years of campaigning have resulted in an important
report in 2013 sponsored by the Royal College of Obstetricians &
Gynaecologists, Royal College of Nursing, The Royal College of
Midwives, CPHVA Unite in Health, and Equality Now. The report
outlines a series of measures that need to be taken within Healthcare
both to deal with the physical and psychological fall-out of FGM, as
well as establishing preventative and interventionary measures (The
Royal College of Midwives 2013). FGM has been included in British
legislation since 1985, at which point the procedure was made illegal.
The 2013 report states, however, that no charges had been pressed
against any perpetrators in spite of the fact that 66,000 UK residents
had experienced FGM, and 23,000 girls under 15 were deemed to be at
risk of it (The Royal College of Midwives 2013). In 2003, legislation
advanced further, making it an offence to take girls and young women
overseas in order to have the procedure done. In spite of these mea-
sures, there has been an increase in FGM from 1.04% of the popula-
tion in 2001, to 1.67% of the population in 2008 (The Royal College
of Midwives 2013).
Evidently, then, in spite of the legislative changes, making FGM a
crime, there are no infrastructures in place to address or educate on the
subject. Ali’s work, alongside Hussein, has forced the public services to
rethink how they can create a model that is preventative as well as

responsive. The emergency services are now educated in how to identify
young women who might be at risk of the procedure, and to escalate the
case to social services (Royal College of Midwives et al. 2013).
Daughters of Eve, in addition to filling a vacuum, is also innovating
training for medical professionals and the emergency services in the hope
that FGM will be eradicated within the UK. In 2013, the crime became
recognised as a form of child abuse, which has increased its importance
and the necessity of preventing it within young people. As conviction
rates demonstrate, FGM awareness raising and campaigning still has a
long struggle ahead of it. I also want to recognise, that unlike the
majority of women I have addressed in relation to trolling, Ali experi-
enced quite real and embodied threats to her well-being. While she and
Hussein have been the recipients of particularly vitriolic online threats,
both have experienced trouble from their own communities. At WOW
festival in 2014, Ali discussed some of her more violent experiences
offline: an acquaintance told her family that he would kill Ali for £500,
while another man attempted to hit her with his car (Praagh 2015). As
opposed to opting purely for threat and bullying, there is an embodied
risk for Ali, in which silencing is not just achieved through the opposi-
tion speaking loudly, but murder.
Perhaps most significantly, is that unlike Bates’ Everyday Sexism,
which seems to have gained popularity on account of its ‘universality’,
Ali has been hindered by the ‘uniqueness’ of her experience. On arriving
back to the UK after undergoing FGM at the age of seven, she spoke to a
teacher about the experience in the hope that it might give her some
insight into the practice and why she had been subjected to it. The
teacher told her ‘this is what happens to girls like you’ (Poon 2014), and
Ali elaborates that she found this problem to be quite consistent in the
UK, where people stated ‘Well, we don’t want to interfere in your
culture’ (Poon 2014). The difficulty for Ali is not purely that FGM
happens in a private, familial and domestic sphere, and therefore is an
invisible problem, but also the cultural determinism when the issue is
finally vocalised. Ali has been required to fight cultural assumptions, as
well as the UK’s reluctance to address a practice that they viewed as
‘cultural’ or ‘religious’. Part of Ali’s campaigning, as a result, is not

specific to the affects of this fourth wave moment, but an ongoing battle
in which multicultural Britain needs to learn how to address a wide
variety of cultures while ensuring they establish and maintain services
that protect and address the needs of women.
In spite of this, Daughters of Eve has very much participated within,
impacted upon and resonated with this fourth wave affectivity. Bates
and Ali are now very good friends, having given a number of talks
together after experiencing similar meteoric rises to attention within
the public eye. As I have suggested in my previous chapters, feminists
and feminist organisations can be affiliated with a wave, or in tandem
with the wave, without having to adopt the mantle as part of their title
or campaign. Daughters of Eve is central to raising awareness of true
intersectional feminism, as well as calling for the UK’s public services to
represent all women. That said, the campaigns have also coincided with
the intensity of this fourth wave surge. Within this feminist moment, a
number of campaigns around body image have come to the fore, with an
interrogation of the rise in labiaplasty amongst women. Daughters of
Eve, as a result, has gained much attention from the way in which the
personal is moving into the political realm through the help of fast-
moving and wide-reaching social media. Therefore, I am not suggesting
that Ali and her organisation is excluded from this fourth wave affective
temporality. Rather, I am using her work as an example of the way in
which organisations can be involved in fourth wave moments, and
benefit from the increased public interest in feminism, even if their
work has predated and will continue long after the surge. Ali claims
that she first became an FGM activist at secondary school, when she
encountered a number of other young women who had undergone the
procedure. This awareness, and the determination to campaign against
FGM, occurred in 2003 as opposed to within a period characterised
through online activism, Twitter trolling, Conservative austerity and
brand mobilisation.
The other difficulty that has emerged within this fourth wave
moment, but will continue long beyond this affective temporality, is
that of trans feminism. Feminism has a history with LGBTQ activists
that has been both positive and negative. The second wave had a
fractious relationship with lesbianism, spawning the Lavender
Menace. While some activists sought to distance themselves from it,
others such as Rich, were writing about the dangers of compulsory
heterosexuality (Rich 1995), while some theorists championed lesbian
separatism (Jeffreys 1993). The third wave, with its emphasis on online
Utopia, DIY cultures and intersectionality, changed feminism’s rela-
tionship with sexuality. This wave’s association with academia and
theory created a relationship between queer theory and feminism
(Braidotti and Butler 1997; Schor and Weed 1997). While this sum-
mary is brief, it demonstrates that as we move through chronological
time, the wider progress made in relation to LGBTQ rights is reflected
in social movements. As such, as LGBTQ identities have become more
widely accepted, they have been further integrated into feminist
politics.
Within this fourth wave moment, trans activism (separate to femin-
ism) is receiving a significant amount of attention. A number of promi-
nent spokespeople seem to transcend transatlantic divides, with figures
like Laverne Cox and Caitlyn Jenner receiving press in the UK as well as
the USA.9 This has been reflected in the UK, with activists such as Paris
Lees topping the Independent Pink List in 2015, and Jack Monroe,
becoming a vocal and very visible activist for trans rights.10 While, then,
this period might be considered a trans tipping point, this progress seems
to be complemented by groups who are equally averse to trans visibility
and inclusion (Jeffreys 2014). Once again, while this opposition seems
to be especially virulent in the USA, particularly in relation to schools
9
Laverne Cox rose to fame through a Netflix program, ‘Orange is the New Black’ that focuses on
women’s experiences within American jail. She is the first trans woman to have appeared on the
cover of TIME magazine, and is an active advocate of trans rights. Caitlyn Jenner initially rose to
fame as Bruce Jenner, on the reality TV programme ‘Keeping up with the Kardashians’. In 2015,
Jenner came out as a trans woman, and appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair in July, announcing
her name change to Caitlyn. Jenner is also a very visible trans advocate and has made a television
show, ‘I am Cait’, on the subject of her transition.
10
Paris Lees is a very visible trans activist within the UK. She established a trans campaign ‘All
About Trans’, and in 2015 was top of the Independent’s Pink List, which celebrates LGBT public
figures in the UK. In 2015, the food blogger Jack Munroe came out as trans. Munroe identifies as
non-gender binary, neither as a woman nor a man.
and the use of bathrooms, there is also evidence of it within the UK (Withers
2010).11 In January 2016, a report on trans issues within the UK, commis-
sioned by Maria Miller and the Women and Equalities Committee was
published. Amongst numerous important finds, such as a need for the NHS
to change its treatment of trans patients, Miller also discussed the backlash
against her work. To her surprise, the most virulent attacks were coming
from women who purported to be feminist.12 While Miller recognised the
important work of single-sex services, such as rape crisis centres, she did call
for an increased support of trans women (WEC 2015).
Trans identities have an interesting relationship with feminism’s
exploration of both gender and sex, in that they seem to simultaneously
contest and support essentialism and constructivism. Being born in the
wrong body seems to reject biological essentialism. However, the move-
ment to change that body then seems to suggest that there is a still a
kind-of biological essentialism at work. Amongst this essentialism, there
is a sense that gender and sex can be constructed, thus allowing for
greater fluidity (Salamon 2010), which is particularly exemplified by
those who identify as just ‘trans’ as opposed to a trans woman or trans
man. This troubling of approaches to gender and sex, with a movement
between essentialism and constructivism, as well as a rejection of the
gender binary in addition to a reinforcing of it, should not mean that
trans women are in any way identified as against or antithetical to
feminism. Trans identities, furthermore, require the same services and
respect as other women, in addition to services aimed directly at the
experience of being trans, from both the medical, psychological and
everyday perspective. While feminism still seems keen to emphasise its
11
An EU LGBT survey, ‘Being Trans in the European Union’ found that over 50% of trans
people had been discriminated against on account of their status within the last year: http://fra.
europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra-2014-being-trans-eu-comparative-0_en.pdf. A 2016 report,
released by the House of Commons, indicated that transgender hate crime was massively under-
reported, and often part of everyday experience for trans people: http://www.publications.parlia
ment.uk/pa/cm201516/cmselect/cmwomeq/390/390.pdf.
12
In speaking about the report, Miller has stated that her Twitter feed was inundated with
criticism from women. They claimed that in protecting trans people, she was allowing violent men
to hide behind trans identity in order to gain access to more potential female victims: http://www.
independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/maria-miller-says-only-hostility-to-transgender-report-came-
from-women-purporting-to-be-feminists-a6830406.html.
openness and intersectionality, this fourth wave temporality, while see-

ing an increase in trans activism, has also witnessed the beginnings of
what I anticipate to be an ongoing problem between trans exclusionary
radical feminists and trans women (Serano 2007).
Much like feminism’s difficulty with practising total intersectionality,
drawing attention to multicultural issues as opposed to those of white
British women, trans activism will inevitably continue after this fourth
wave surge has abated. While it might receive less press coverage, and be
addressed less in feminist circles after the affective intensity of this
moment has dissipated, there is a longevity to this issue that will be
continued in the work of trans communities. Thus, again, while TERFs,
radical feminism and trans activists, have clashed within this particular
moment, this difficulty seems set to continue for some time in relation
to very specific groups of women. This is, in part, because we are
currently experiencing the overlap of two surges: the trans tipping
point and the fourth wave of feminism. Inevitably, with the attention
on both movements intensifying, the relationship between the two will
be similarly intensified within this temporality. When the fourth wave of
feminism begins to abate slightly, or simply dissipate having crashed
against the shore, the trans tipping point might still be continuing with
consistent strength. What this convergence has demonstrated, however,
is that the intense affective surges of waves do not always result in
progress or movements forward. By this, I mean that the numerical
delineations, which increase with each wave increment, seem to suggest
that feminism will move increasingly towards total equality, openness
and progress. However, the fourth wave demonstrates that while certain
groups with feminism want to include all trans women (Hoff 2015),
there is also vocal opposition (Jeffreys 2014) which is especially notable
because of the increased attention on feminism within this temporality.
This relates to both the positive and negative affects that combine in
order to create a wave. Feminists will not always be contributing positive
and good affects to their affective temporality. In this particular case, in
relation to trans women and inclusion, the affects are especially difficult,
centring around exclusion, suspicion, fear and unhappiness. The fact
that the trans debate has provoked such negative affect, on both sides of
the argument, has ensured its continued presence, and a kind of affective
stickiness, in which specific activists are stuck to the issue through a

feeling of adhesion.
How Long Will the Fourth Wave Last?

There are a number of factors that might change the fourth wave of
feminism, either increasing or decreasing the intensity with which con-
temporary activism is taking place. As I have stated, the economic
conditions created through Conservative austerity have had a large
impact on the fourth wave incarnation of feminism. It has forced a
renewed investment and interest in grassroots movement, putting the
responsibility for gender equality back on to the people, as opposed to
supporting it through state funding. However, if this were to change,
with increased financial support of rape crisis centres, for example, there
would be less need for concerted grassroots efforts. While it does not
seem as if cuts to public services will stop within the immediate future,
feminism will need to continue with a sustained energy, in order to
compensate for the lack of state support. The closure of rape crisis
centres and safe houses for women leaving abusive relationships means
that feminism needs to present information on, and resources for, these
particular issues, ensuring that they never disappear entirely from public
view. The relationship between state funding and feminism is an impor-
tant one (Evans 2015; Fraser 2013): not only is grassroots activism a
means of gaining attention and swiftly contesting inequality, it is also
needed to support women in a physical and financial sense.
Interestingly, however, is that some feminist issues of the fourth wave
are being mainstreamed, making their way into institutional frame-
works. In these cases, the affective intensity that binds feminist subjects
together at a grassroots level, is displaced through a focus on state
support and financial aid. In part, we can see this as a long-term
possibility for organisations like Daughters of Eve, where FGM’s legality
is now being addressed by the government, while treatment and pre-
ventative action are being taught across our public services. Similarly,
legislation surrounding prostitution has changed within the last five
years, resulting in it becoming illegal to pay for sex. This shifts the
focus such that women who are selling sex, irrespective of their situation,
are no longer punished for the act. Instead, responsibility falls to the
punters for seeking out sex.13 In these two cases, the law has been
changed to reflect contemporary female experience. This has then been
supported by public services within the UK, who are required to change
their approach to specific issues.
However, this positive and progressive step forward, does not always
manifest successfully. FGM still requires cultural mediation, and is yet
to see any significant convictions. Similarly, sex workers are still
denied legality within the UK, which prevents them from unionising,
or organising in a way that promotes the safety of the workers against
potentially dangerous clients (Grant 2014). There is also little evi-
dence that the police are punishing punters as opposed to sex workers,
especially when it comes to the most vulnerable working from the
streets (Amnesty 2016). A final example of the mainstreaming of a
feminist issue, is the change in laws surrounding revenge porn, which
was made illegal in 2015. In spite of this, it is still extremely difficult to
press charges, with an incredibly low conviction rate in addition to a
low rate of cases being investigated (CPS 2014). So, mainstreaming
and institutionalisation of specific issues still require support from
feminist organisations. When government investment in women’s
services combines with an apparent interest in women-specific issues,
there is less need for coordinated and concerted grassroots efforts
at visibility.
Another difficulty for sustaining the fourth wave, is its heavy
reliance on social media for visibility. While Facebook and Twitter
are incredibly useful for creating wider accessibility, making organi-
sation increasingly easy, and mobilising people within very short
timeframes, feminism’s use of social media could be questioned in
terms of its efficacy. In my chapter on fourth wave case studies, for
the most part, I focused on social media campaigns that actually
resulted in change, having gained an unprecedented momentum.
13
For further guidance on UK approaches to pornography, see the CPS website: http://www.cps.
gov.uk/legal/p_to_r/prostitution_and_exploitation_of_prostitution/.
Some campaigns do capture public imagination and garner huge

online support, while others disappear entirely, having not been
able to invoke the same levels of enthusiasm (Lovink 2011). As
such, specific problems or issues gain far more publicity and interest
than others. Furthermore, these successfully launched online cam-
paigns are in the minority; the majority never make it into the
national media. The dependence on social media then, as a means
by which to make issues visible and mobilise campaigners, is not
always a useful one. In fact, while it promises speed and ease, it is
possible that it can be entirely without effect, unless it captures the
right kind of attention (Lovink 2011).
The other difficulty with social media is that it skews our under-
standing of the type of support that feminism is receiving. The phe-
nomenon of ‘clicktivism’ has been coined to reflect that activism is
being replaced with a series of clicking. Putting our names on petitions,
or sharing particular causes, is easy to do. Commitment to campaign-
ing, thus, has changed significantly. While it is easier to participate and
to be counted, it is also easier to overlook, ignore or dismiss after initial
engagement (Lovink 2011). It might be, then, that campaigns
launched online receive incredible support from Internet users who
are happy to sign petitions, but not necessarily act beyond their
computers. This kind of activism, while it makes specific issues seem
as if they have popular support, does not leave the realm of the
Internet. Instead, there is a self-perpetuating cycle of an issue becom-
ing prominent online, supported online, shared online and then having
no material impact on the real world outside of the Internet space. The
mass support and easy participation also have an impact on the way we
understand the fourth wave feminist community. It could be perceived
to be vast, with unwavering time and energy to dedicate to each new
petition or hashtag. However, the online activism is not activism in a
real sense: an Internet presence does not always equate to actual
change. Online activism might continue with increased ease, but if it
does not translate into material change, there will be a widening gap
between the Internet and the reality of women’s experiences. A gap
that is not reflected, sadly, in women’s real and embodied experiences
of online hatred and misogyny.
The fourth wave has also allowed for an intense focus on specific issues
that will ‘outlive’ this particular feminist affective temporality. The rise of
extremism, as well as discussions of FGM, require the UK to address
multiculturalism in ways that are neither culturally deterministic, nor
racist. While there have been numerous feminist debates about Islam
and the veil within this fourth wave moment, the difficulty of Britain’s
multicultural society has been inflamed and exacerbated by Europe’s
wider migrant crisis.14 This is not to say that these issues will not impact
upon women, but that there are issues at stake here that have wider scope
than feminism. It is likely that practices such as FGM as well as a rise in
racism within the UK itself will require particular attention to be paid to
the way in which the country can address its range of cultures and
religions. Similarly, while trans identities are hotly contested within
feminism (Jeffreys 2014), their intersection with the LGBT community
ensures that the campaigning is not tied to this fourth wave moment.
With a necessary focus on the NHS, as well as Stonewall’s commitment to
expand in order to represent trans issues, it seems as if there is longevity to
the campaigning that will last beyond this contemporary of feminism.
Thus, while the intensity of the fourth wave might have added a certain
intensity to intersections of gender and sexuality, as well as gender and
cultural determinism, the scope of both of these areas extends beyond the
capabilities and investments of the fourth wave of feminism. As they
continue to move beyond feminism, into a critique of institutions, there
is a sense that they will contribute less energy to the fourth wave moment.
14
The relationship between Islam and feminism, as well as the migrant crisis’ impact on the
politics are both different issues, even though they are often conflated by the mainstream press. In
right-wing publications, the migrant crisis is often positioned as an influx of non-refugees moving
to the UK in order to create communities that operate under their own laws, ignoring those of the
country at large. The argument, in these instances, is that these migrants have religions and
cultures that marginalise and subordinate women, qualities which they are still maintaining within
the UK. In the UK, there are charities and foundations that work specifically with the intersections
of gender, religion and culture, including Daughters of Eve, but extending to other charities such
as Karma Nirvana, that work exclusively on forced marriage and honour-based abuse. The
problematic of gender, religion and culture, however, has been exacerbated by incidents of mass
sexual assault in European cities as well as reports of abuse in migrant centres, allegedly perpetrated
by migrants. These incidents have resulted in a spate of right-wing politicians using feminism as a
means by which to justify xenophobia and exclusionary politics.
Conclusion
Similar to certain campaigns and issues intersecting with the fourth wave,
before following their own trajectory slightly outside of feminism, this
contemporary has seen the birth of a women’s political party. The fact that
the party has been established within the last two years, implies that its
lifetime will extend far beyond that of the fourth wave surge. The fourth
wave, with its emphasis on representation and visibility, will possibly lose
momentum as different groups and organisations find their way into
institutions, with an aim at long-term impact with less public conscious-
ness raising. The Women’s Equality Party was co-founded in 2015 by
Catherine Mayer and Sandi Toksvig. On their website, the party included
a statement on ‘Why us, Why now’.15 The ‘why now’ seems especially
significant for my consideration of the contemporary as a convergence of
past, present and future, within an intensely affective moment. Evidently,
the affect of the fourth wave galvanised the two founders in their aims to
establish the party. With increased visibility and media focus on inequality
within the UK, ranging from the pay gap, to presence on FTSE boards, to
rape conviction, to gender stereotypes in schools, the Women’s Equality
Party decided that formal, political representation was necessary. They
claim that they will never stray from the party line, which is focused
entirely on women’s rights within the UK. Whether this party will be
successful, gaining any seats within Parliament will be determined by
future campaigning, but its very establishment demonstrates a formalised
and institutional feminist effort to ensure that feminism becomes part of
our most influential organisation. Drawing on past feminist activism,
which includes petitioning and lobbying the government, while aspiring
to a truly feminist future, the party is benefitting from feminism’s con-
temporary moment in order to establish itself as a national political force.
In addition to this, it is inevitable that there will be further waves of
feminism. These will not necessarily be determined by a new generation
who need a title in order to represent themselves, nor will it be a rebellion
15
For further information on the Women’s Equality Party see their website: http://www.women
sequality.org.uk.
against the fourth wave. Rather, it will be a surge in feminist interest that is
represented by the media and played out on public forums, in response to
an environment that creates an overwhelming affective response. The aims
of feminism have still not changed within the fourth wave moment: they
have broadened and diversified to cater for a more multiple UK, but
ultimately, are still concerned with equality for women. Given the statistics
about equal pay being achieved, and female representation equalling that of
men in Parliament, it seems like it will be decades, if not centuries, until the
UK has reached gender parity.16 The fourth wave, as energised as it might
appear within this contemporary, cannot sustain itself for decades; activists
do not have the energy to fight without rest, in the same way that some
campaigns might be derailed by changes within the context from which
they emerged. As such, feminism might slip from visibility, even while it
remains at work within institutions and in long-term campaigns that have
a very clear trajectory of political, legislative and public service reform. As
our four waves establish, though, feminism will re-emerge in a combina-
tion of institutionalised and grassroots efforts, when the context and the
affects converge to create a sticky and relatable surge, concerned with
movement from the past into a better future.
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Conclusion
The history of the wave is a` troubled one, even while it might seem
to describe surges of feminist activism very accurately. It has led to
progress and loss narratives emerging, both of which are used to justify
tension and divisions between different generations of the social move-
ment. The attention received by the multiple waves has also resulted in
certain time periods being considered as ‘outside’ or ‘inactive’.
Understanding feminism as divided into four wave moments of notable
action, implies that the politics lapses into inaction between the surges.
This, of course, is not the case, but our understanding of the wave
ensures that ongoing and long-term activism are effaced from our overall
understanding of the social movement. Waves have also come to be
associated with specific figureheads and identities. The second and third
wave are crudely characterised as earnest, consciousness-raising, and then
DIY zine and punk cultures, respectively. The surge in activist intensity
in those times ensures that specific women are positioned as representa-
tive of the wave as a whole. The women, unfortunately, are often not
reflective of the diversity actually occurring within the wave itself,
making the narrative appear to be entirely tied to white feminism, as
opposed to a more multicultural and intersectional social movement. It

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53682-8
186 Conclusion
is no surprise then, that the wave has been widely critiqued, and in some
cases, wholly rejected in relation to a historical understanding of
feminism.
In spite of these difficulties and limitations, the wave narrative still
seems to dominate feminist scholarship and history. Even those who
choose to reject the wave are adopting a position in relation to the
narrative: in not using the wave, critics are forced first to invoke it,
explain it and then reject it. As such, whether considered useful or
limiting for feminism, the wave still maintains a dominating presence
in feminist scholarship. The question posed by my work here, as a result
of this, is how the wave narrative might be reclaimed in a positive sense.
How can it be moved away from any associations with generation and
identity, and how might it be used to address feminism’s exclusions and
difficult history? Instead of associating the fourth wave with a genera-
tional need for a new feminism, I have understood it as relating to a
surge of affect within the social movement itself. These surges or waves
are created by a number of intersecting factors, none of which relate to
specific identities, or specific age groups. Rather, they emerge in response
to changing socio-political cultures; they gain momentum and strength
as certain campaigns or issues capture public imagination; they are
sustained through a number of activists becoming visibly involved in
what appear to be the central concerns of that moment. The wave, then,
becomes a more fluid happening, one that is not inevitable, and also
cannot be anticipated. The start of a wave occurs very organically, when
a set of circumstances create the context in which feminism surges with
greater strength than usual. This does not negate a wider sea of feminism
that has been at work, but rather, suggests that internal and external
contexts impact directly on the intensity with which feminism manifests
in the UK.
The wave needs to be approached such that it can be continually
opened, both within the moment and retrospectively. Rather than
offering takes on the wave that limit its scope, or hinder an exploration
of the non-wave moments of feminism, it is possible to see the surges as a
phenomenon specific to unique contexts. In order for this to take place,
it was necessary for me to consider feminist timekeeping. I suggest that
feminism should not be viewed as linear in the sense that it moves in a
Conclusion 187
straight line from one achievement to another, ever progressing forward

to total equality. The present should not necessarily be viewed as an
improvement on the past, in the same way that the future needs to be
entertained continually because its possibilities sustain the social move-
ment. With this in mind, then, the past and future are so central to
feminism, and an understanding of feminism, that the surges in activism
cannot be without them. As such, wave moments become a contempor-
ary: a simultaneity of unfolding activism within the moment, tempered
through knowledge of the past and sustained by intent for the future.
These surges are not status quo and nor can their energy be maintained
for such periods of time that they come to dominate the history of
feminism. Instead, there is a finitude to the temporal intensity of
contemporary feminism where the wave moments are driven by a
forcefulness that, at some point, will have to dissipate. It is the finitude
of the waves, the impossibility that they can maintain the same level of
energy for an indefinite period of time, that makes the wave moments so
pronounced within the timeline of feminism. They do not negate the
past, but instead acknowledge it, using it in conjunction with the future
in order to allow for an intensely unfolding activism to take shape within
the wave moment.
Affect is central to this way of thinking about the wave narrative. It
bridges the gap between the individual and the collective, the personal
and the public, and then feeling and mobilisation. Starting in individual
feelings all harboured by different feminists, affect is the cumulative
effect of those feelings experienced within a specific context. The com-
bination of these two allows for affect to draw from its surroundings,
using legislative change, austerity measures, increased social media usage
and more personal testimony coming to the fore in order to gain
traction. The affective surge of the wave is not comprised of uniformly
shared feeling. It can be a composite of negative affects, emerging both
within and without feminism, as well as the more positive experiences of
solidarity and empowerment. The strength of these multiple feelings at
work, and then the way in which they become a collectively experienced
force, allows for a passage to be made in both temporality and then
wider society. By this I mean that the affective intensity of these
moments is what constitutes a wave: there is a movement from feeling
188 Conclusion
responses to a cohesive social movement, which begins to move with

time. The force and the passage, outlined by Seigworthy and Gregg, do
not undermine the individual, nor do they overlook feeling. Instead, the
affective environment creates a certain stickiness: one that adheres
feminists together within a finite period of intensive social activism.
The Fourth Wave

The fourth wave of feminism is comprised of a range of affects, not all of
which seem to complement one another. The Slut Walk and its relation-
ship to low rate conviction for sexual assault, rape culture and the
judgement of sexually active women, creates feelings of resistance,
anger and rebellion against culpability. It also, in contrast, engages
with feelings of disgust and disbelief: in spite of the numerous pieces
of legislation passed against rape, the fact that women can still seem
responsible for their attack in any way, is both demoralising and incred-
ible. Everyday Sexism, as I outlined, creates a sense of solidarity,
togetherness and sharing, in a culture that encourages women to think
of their experiences of sexism as both exceptional and unimportant.
However, the mass of submissions to the site are overwhelming, with
the volume creating a sense that everyday sexism is inevitable as opposed
to easily challenged. Feminism’s reliance on capital, as explored through
the FBook Rape Campaign, also creates a range of feelings. While
women might feel empowered through mobilising their brands on
behalf of the politics, there is also a sense of complicity and resignation.
Needing capital in order to sway industry towards feminism is tiring,
and demonstrates a lack of actual interest or investment on the part of
the brands. Similarly, creating stronger ties or relationships with brands
forces feminism to become complicit in a capitalist system that makes
use of gender inequality, whether through sexist advertising, or perpe-
tuating the pay gap. The trolling that resulted from the £5 note cam-
paign has also raised a number of different feelings. Of course, there was
a sense of triumph and success when the campaign was effective, but this
was paired with the realisation that such progress will be met with
Conclusion 189
threats of violence. The anonymity and mass of online responses to

Criado-Perez not only made her fearful, but injected a sense of worry,
fear, resistance and futility into the movement as a whole. It might be
possible to effect change when British institutions are involved, but how
can cultural change be effected when masses of trolls respond to a
woman on the £10 note with violence. The case of Mustafa is similarly
troubling for what it reveals about intersectional feminism. It is quite
clear that feminists of different identities will receive very different
treatments, depending on how they are understood and encoded by
wider society. Mustafa also demonstrated how the tactics of feminism
are now disappointingly being wielded against feminism. Hate speech,
exclusionary practices and silencing are being attributed to those femin-
ists who are most on the margins, creating an environment in which it is
nearly impossible to challenge more hegemonic voices.
In addition to this range of feelings, all of which seem to crash against
one another, as opposed to working in harmonious dialogue, there are
the mass affects created through the existence of another wave of
feminism. As feminism begins its fourth wave incarnation, it is receiving
increased press time, ensuring that its central ideas are being transmitted
to a wider audience. While this will inevitably result in resistance, threats
of violence, and anger, it also increases awareness. This new sensitivity to
feminist issues will create feelings of anger, disbelief, as well as a need to
act. The possibility of coming together within an intense moment
exacerbates a sense of solidarity, making it more widely and forcefully
felt than might be possible outside of a wave. The stickiness of the
affective environment encourages subjects to adhere to one another in
order to create powerful and affective as well as effective feminist action.
With this increased action, or at least attention to feminism, achieved
within the fourth wave contemporary, there is also a concomitant sense
of optimism. While the need for feminism might evoke disappointment,
disaffection and anger, the fact that it still continues, surging towards an
equal society, is cause for optimism. This, of course, is tempered by
pessimism that previous waves have not been able to advance as far as
feminism would like. Thus, feminist waves exist in a tension of past
pessimism and future optimism, with both creating strong affective ties
amongst feminist subjects.
190 Conclusion
The intensity of a wave of feminism and the increased attention on

the social movement, however, do not always create positive feeling. As
my writing on intersectional feminism, including Mustafa, and trans
feminism demonstrates, there is an intensification of the differences and
divides within and without feminism. While Ali’s work on FGM con-
tributes to the intense sense of solidarity and action within this fourth
wave moment, her work will inevitably continue long after the wave
dissipates. This is not because there is a lack of interest within feminism,
but that so few provisions and understanding of the issue pre-exist her
work, that it will be a far more labour-intensive engagement than the
other pieces of activism I have discussed as fourth wave. Mustafa
demonstrates that the work of feminists of colour is more difficult
than that of white feminists. The intersection of gender and race ensures
that WoC are understood as more aggressive and more difficult than
their white counterparts. Similarly, there has been a surge in dissonance
between cisgender and trans feminism. While focus on both trans issues
and feminism within this current wave has wider benefits for both social
movements, the interaction between the two is fraught. These examples
demonstrate that when a wave intensifies the energies of feminism, there
is a similar intensification of negative aspects and affects. On account of
increased attention in feminism, TERFs are also receiving significant
press, finding more cause to raise their voices to counter the momentum
of the trans feminist movement. Similarly, feminism’s mainstream
popularity and the focus on the movement have made the differences
between WoC and white women far more pronounced. Rather than
necessarily detracting from the intensity of the wave, these issues actually
contribute a sense of urgent feeling and urgent engagement. Even while
negative and positive affects might seem counter to one another, in the
same way that exclusionary practices seem to contravene an open and
surging feminism, they all coexist within the same moment creating a
strong web of affective engagement.
The combination of affects that I have outlined here have not
diverged wildly from the historical precedent set by previous waves.
Optimism and pessimism have always been integral to feminism, with
both justifying the continued need for the social movement to exist.
Conclusion 191
There is pessimism about how much change towards gender equality can
occur without those agitating for it, while there is still some optimism
that the future might be different. Both the affects of feminism and the
individual feelings of feminist subjects within the fourth wave do not
signal a departure from feminism’s past. That the ‘personal is political’
has long been established as a tenet of feminism explains why it is
necessary for passages between individual emotion and mass-realised
affect to exist. Furthermore, it indicates that while this moment might
be witnessing the escalation and internationalisation of single, personal
experiences, such incidents have always been central to the politics.
Experiences of sexual violence, the injustice of everyday sexism, the
inevitable anger that rises in relation to inequality have driven the
whole of feminism, and are not unique to this particular cultural
moment. The solidarity and intensity experienced within waves of
feminism explain how specific contemporaries are understood as
‘waves’; they are surges in action as a direct result of intensely shared
affective ties. The affects that I have outlined for the fourth wave, then,
do not actually make it more distinct from the second or third wave.
Rather, they demonstrate how this moment, much like the wave
moments that have existed before it, draws on a wider ocean of feminism
to contextualise a surge in feeling investment.
Intensity and Continuity

If waves cannot be identified by their affects, then, how can they
constitute an affective temporality? It is useful to return to Walker’s
piece, ‘Becoming Third Wave’ to consider how she turns her experiences
into a declaration of a new wave. The case of Clarence Thomas and
Anita Hill is turned inwards, causing difficulty between Walker and her
lover. In that case, the external world, one in which sexism prevails, plays
out in the privacy of a domestic situation. However, both Walker and
her lover are able to recognise systemic oppressions, of which the
heaviest is the intersection of race and gender. In asking whether her
lover will be complicit in her destruction, Walker recognises that as a
192 Conclusion
black woman, her experiences, and her body, are at far greater risk than
those of others. Then, her movement on the train, away from a group of
men sexually propositioning her, is a form of mobilisation. She describes
the movement, and the feeling of that movement, as pure force.
Transformed from fear, disgust, anger, her feelings instead become a
force that moves her, not just creating the passage between train car-
riages, but the passage through to a new wave of activism. Walker’s
experience is significant because she, herself, identifies the way in which
context stimulates feeling, which converts into an outward-looking
forwardness, one that insists upon mobility and movement.
Affective temporalities, then, are characterised through their intensity
as opposed to the feelings they have evoked or encountered. As my
chapter on the fourth wave demonstrates, there are far too many con-
tending feelings, both publically and privately, for there to be an easily
defined affective identity for this wave. While the context of austerity
Britain, as well as the increase in accountability for historical sex abuse
are impacting upon this particular incarnation, they are setting the scene
in which feelings take on particular collective forcefulness. Similarly,
while the use of technology could be positioned as a fourth wave
methodology, every wave has made use of innovations at their disposal.
It is inevitable that the social movement would turn to social media
within a time period that is characterised by online activity. Thus, it is
not necessarily that online activism is inherently feminist, but that the
online can be wielded in order to further feminism, disseminate ideas to
a mass base and organise with increasing rapidity. In relation to affect
and intensity, then, the social and political context has created the space
in which there will be intense feeling. The blurring of the public and the
private has also enabled for usually private experiences and responses to
move legitimately into the public sphere. Social media has contributed
to this by creating rapidity that ensures intensity is maintained: issues are
not allowed time to percolate or grow old, but instead, can be immedi-
ately reported and responded to. As such, this fourth wave moment has
been created not purely through its activism or the feminists involved,
but through the context and the technology that have facilitated a
forceful surge in activity.
Conclusion 193
Each feminist wave has had an intensity that has either resulted in
certain objectives being achieved, such as the vote, or a sustained period
of activism that has effected social or cultural changes, such as our
approach to gender as performative. The intensity is what creates the
wave, making it a pronounced moment within the history of feminism
through catalysing more activists, and receiving increased attention from
society. This forcefulness does not need to emerge from momentous
events, but can occur when the seemingly insignificant gains momen-
tum. It may also occur when a number of factors collide with one
another, whether that is a new context in which feminism seems more
pertinent, or there is a particular campaign that has incredibly wide-
spread appeal. These forces, as Ahmed states, have a certain stickiness to
them. The affects, all working together, stick to people and in turn, stick
those feminists to one another, in what seems to be a cohesive social
movement. The pure volume of people adhering to the feminism creates
what seems to be a surge amongst a pre-existing and ever-working social
movement. However, the affects are not uniformly positive, and nor do
they always work in favour of a united feminism. Sometimes it is much
more the intensity of collective feeling, as opposed to uniformly shared
feelings, that creates the surge in feminism. With increased attention,
action and forcefulness, other feelings come to the fore: difficult affects
that speak to exclusionary practices and failings within feminism itself.
While these do not create feelings of unity, their existence and expres-
sion are necessary in order for the social movement to continue its own
internal progression and development. Furthermore, while bad feeling
might result in what appear to be splits or divisions, it still contributes to
an overall affective intensity of a wave moment.
Time: Chronological but Not Linear

Central to my understanding of the wave narrative, in particular this
fourth incarnation, is reconceiving feminist time. Much like the queer
theory I outlined in my chapter on temporality, it is necessary for
feminism to maintain a simultaneity of the past, present and future.
194 Conclusion
The past not only orientates feminism’s direction for the future, but it
establishes precedents from which each wave incarnation can draw. A
focus on the historical allows for a measure of progress for the social
movement, as well as ensuring that waves are not replaced or forgotten,
but carried through time. It is important too, that in addition to history,
there is a focus on the past of feminism. This opens up the possibility for
expanding archives and discovering voices that might have become
marginalised or forgotten in history. As such, a project of reclamation
can work in conjunction with an appreciation of feminism’s work
throughout history, ensuring a continuous opening of the social move-
ment. The future and past become especially important within the
contemporary, where a moment of activism is of such intensity that it
comes to constitute a wave. Through understanding the moment’s place
within a wider sea of time, there is an emphasis on continuity, rather
than a focus on how each wave is an innovation or revolution within
feminism.
I have acknowledged that it is impossible to escape chronology;
feminist progress, events, marches and campaigns have all happened
on specific dates, in the same way that the first, second and third wave
all occurred within numerical order. However, in emphasising the
chronological as opposed to the linear, I am attempting to demonstrate
that each new wave is not purely a function of time elapsing. That is to
say that within the period of second, third and fourth wave, each new
iteration does not occur because the previous one has lapsed or dis-
sipated completely. A new wave is not inevitable; one does not replace
another in order to maintain a forceful feminist momentum. It is for this
reason that the second, third and fourth wave have all appeared to occur
in quick succession. They are not all linear and inevitable inheritors of
one another, but rather, responses to very specific contexts, drawing on
the technological capabilities of that time. With this in mind, then, it is
possible that feminism will not have another wave. It might be that the
social movement continues to fight for gender parity, but does not
encounter another context that creates a wave’s affective environment.
Conversely, it might be the case that there are countless further waves,
with each one emerging in a context that creates a sticky affective
temporality for feminism. These possibilities negate the idea that each
Conclusion 195
new generation makes its own form of feminism, replacing their

‘mother’s’ precursor with an entirely new social movement of their
own. The wave does not have to be linked to generational divisiveness,
but instead, can be understood as a surge or force consolidated by a
unique social and political constellation.
Conclusion
Affect and temporality are both necessary for thinking of waves as
‘touching times’. The simultaneity of past, present and future gives
temporality a haptic quality, with the tenses intruding on the same
moment, directing and orientating the social movement. The wave has
a unique relationship to timelines, still adhering to chronology, but
ensuring that when feminism is at its most intense, there is an under-
standing of both the past and the present at work. This haptic tempor-
ality contributes to the intensity of the affects of a moment, resulting in a
wave. The feeling that surrounds feminism, is created by it, and perpe-
tuated through it, constitutes and continues the movement of a wave.
The intensity of shared affect, one that accumulates a range of different
feelings, both good and bad, sustains the contemporary wave, respond-
ing to the contingency of the moment. Waves of feminism, then, are
marked through their strength and force, but also by the finite and
exceptional nature of that force. The affects and temporalities, in creat-
ing the wave, operate with such forcefulness that they cannot be sus-
tained. Not only do activists run out of the energy necessary to continue
such a surge, the contingency of the wave means that it can be subject to
flux. Created in a specific context, when significant aspects of that
context change, the wave might lose momentum. Furthermore, affects
might disappear, creating a movement that is less intensively sticky than
previously. Affect is central to creating such moments of feminist inten-
sity. It recognises that the intensity of mass feeling not only touches
upon the feminists involved, but touches on the wider society in need of
transformation.
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Index
A 114–116, 118, 120–121,

Abortion, 9, 81, 134 123–127, 132–133, 135,
Activism, 1–8, 10–16, 21, 24, 137–139, 141, 147, 155–157,
26–27, 30–37, 39–40, 46–47, 160–165, 167–169, 171,
49–51, 54–60, 62–64, 68, 73, 174–175, 178, 187–193, 196
75, 77, 82–83, 85–87, 90–91, Agamben, Giorgio, 10, 62
93–97, 100–102, 107–109, Ahmed, Sara, 34, 60, 64, 65, 77, 78,
114, 116–119, 126–127, 86, 87, 88, 90, 91, 99, 102,
129–131, 133–134, 136–138, 103, 138, 140, 146, 147, 193
141, 144, 146–148, 150–151, AIDS Actvism, 14, 93, 95
155–156, 160, 162, 165, 167, Anger, 24, 76, 87, 88, 102, 115, 118,
169, 171–172, 174–175, 177, 123, 133, 137, 139, 166, 188,
190, 192–193, 194 189–191, 192
Act up, 14, 55, 93–96, Anonymous, 108, 136
100, 152 Anti-pornography, 50–51
Adhesive, 79, 90, 91 Archive, 15, 36, 46, 48, 60, 68,
Affect, 1–2, 5–6, 8–10, 12–14, 93, 118–127, 156,
22–28, 30–32, 35–40, 160–162, 194
46–48, 53, 55, 57–58, Aune, Kristin, 4
61, 63–65, 67–68, Austerity, 3, 101, 113–114, 157,
70, 73–103, 107–109, 168, 171, 175, 187, 192

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53682-8
200 Index
B Convergence, 39, 40, 53, 67, 89, 94,

Backlash, 15–16, 49–50, 90, 109, 97, 118, 154, 174
134–139, 142–143, 146–147, Criado-Perez, Caroline, 2, 16, 134
151, 165–166, 168, 173
Bates, Laura, 2, 119, 129
Baumgardner, Jennifer, 11 D
Becoming, 4, 13–14, 23–24, 26, 47, Daughters of Eve, 2, 101, 168, 169,
68, 77–82, 89–90, 99, 101, 170, 171, 175
109–110, 114, 146, 157, 172, Dean, Jonathan, 4
175, 177, 191 Deleuze, Giles, 86
Black feminism, 6, 25, 156 Derrida, Jaques, 119
Blogging, 82 Dove, 130, 131, 133, 150, 164
BME, 51, 52, 117, 142, 145, 150
Body, 2, 23, 25, 30, 51, 76, 78–79,
88, 113, 117, 131, 144–145, E
167, 171, 173, 192 Emotion, 9, 73–77, 80–81, 85–88, 97,
Braidotti, Rosi, 14 108–109, 126, 146, 151, 191
Brands, 15, 129, 130, 131, 133, 150, Evans, Ched, 81, 158
151, 164, 188 Evans, Elizabeth, 1, 4, 7, 11, 13, 21,
Butler, Judith, 14 32, 34, 38, 51, 128, 156, 157,
175
Everyday Sexism, 3, 9, 15, 88,
C 118–127, 156, 160–163, 168,
Cameron, David, 86 169, 170, 188, 191
Capital, 15, 117, 127, 129, 131–133, Extimacy, 13, 78, 81, 99
150, 163–164, 188
Chemaly, Soraya, 2, 129
Chronology, 24, 32, 55–57, 63, 69, F
134, 196 Facebook, 8, 15, 16, 107, 127,
Cochrane, Kira, 1 129–132, 136, 164–166, 176
Constellations, 92 Fbook Rape Campaign, 188
Consumer, 15, 133, 150, 151, 164 Feeling, 7, 9, 12–14, 27–28, 31, 36,
Contemporary, 3–4, 10, 12–14, 30, 34, 46, 48, 57, 61, 64, 73–78,
36, 40, 46, 50, 52–53, 57, 80–93, 96–97, 99–102,
59–70, 74–75, 81–83, 85–86, 107–109, 116, 118, 120, 123,
89–91, 101, 107–108, 119–120, 125, 127, 138, 147, 149, 161,
123, 126, 128, 137–139, 150, 163–164, 175, 187–189,
155–157, 160, 162, 165, 169, 190–193
175–176, 178, 187, 189, 194 Female Genital Mutilation, 168
Index 201
Feminist Library, 120 Intersectionality, 2, 4, 29, 31, 51–53,

Figure, 2, 12, 31, 35–36, 39–40, 47, 74, 97, 150, 155–156,
135, 140, 145, 162, 172 166–175
First wave, 21, 33, 35, 56, 100, 151 Intimacy, 13, 81, 82, 102
Force, 2, 6, 9, 10, 13, 25–26, 28, Irony, 17, 64, 139–149, 155, 166–167
31–32, 35, 39–40, 47, 60, 63,
69, 73–74, 76, 78, 80, 83–85,
88–89, 91–93, 95–96, K
128–129, 159, 192, 196 Kill all White Men, 142, 144, 151
Friedman, Jacklyn, 129
4Chan, 165
L
Lesbian Separatism, 172
G LGBT, 14, 47–48, 88, 94, 178
Generation, 7–12, 21–24, 29–33, Liminality, 79, 82, 89–90
39–40, 45, 47, 52, 56, 60, Linear, 23, 29–30, 45–48,
74, 196 50–56, 58, 61–62, 67,
Gregg, Melissa, 70, 73, 82, 83, 84, 89, 196
89, 91, 188 Linguistic strategy, 140
Guattari, Felix, 74, 78–82
M
H Master narrative, 7, 59
Haptic temporality, 46–47, 60 McRobbie, Angela, 23, 48–49,
Herstory, 119 128, 147
Historiography, 53 Mobility, 27, 52, 67, 75, 77, 79–80,
History, 2–3, 6–9, 12, 14, 21–25, 85, 87, 104, 191
32, 39, 46–48, 51–58, 60, Moment, 1–2, 5–8, 10–11, 13–14,
63–64, 67, 86, 88, 90, 94–95, 21–26, 28–31, 33–35, 38–40,
119–120, 125–126, 134, 46–48, 50–52, 54, 57–68,
161–163, 171, 193, 194 73–75, 77, 79, 81–86, 89–92,
Humour, 2, 4, 132, 139, 140 95–96, 99–101, 107–108,
110–113, 115–116, 118–120,
I 124, 126–128, 130, 134–136,
Identity politics, 11, 47, 56, 96 138–139, 141, 146–148,
In-between-ness, 26, 57, 82, 84, 155–157, 160, 163–164,
89, 107 166–169, 171–172, 174, 176,
Internet, 3, 15, 16, 33, 108–111, 178, 183–185, 189–190,
114, 134–138, 164–166, 177 192–193, 195–196
202 Index
Momentary, 82 Public, 2–3, 13, 26, 35, 48, 57, 66,

Moran, Caitlin, 139 73, 75, 77, 79–84, 93, 102,
Mustafa, Bahar, 16, 141, 150 108–109, 114–115, 118,
122–123, 125–126, 132–136,
138, 142, 145, 147–148, 155,
N 161, 164–165, 168, 171,
Narrative, 1, 4–7, 9–10, 13, 21–40, 175–177, 192
45–46, 52–55, 58–61, 69, 74,
83–85, 91, 109, 116, 119,
161, 193 Q
Neoliberalism, 31, 128, 133, 150 Queer, 6, 10, 14, 16, 35, 45–52, 58, 94,
Neuroscience, 75, 76, 79, 85 98, 124, 141, 167, 172, 193
Nimko Ali, 2
No More Page 3, 2, 3, 51, 65,
101, 133
R
No-platforming, 17
Radical Feminism, 50–51
Radio wave, 28–29
Rape, 2, 15, 16, 81, 86, 94, 108,
O
110, 112–117, 122, 130,
Online petitions, 107
135–137, 150, 158, 163, 164,
168, 173, 175, 188
Rape Culture, 2, 112, 115, 117, 136,
P
150, 188
Passage, 47, 78, 81–83, 85, 91, 163,
Reappropriate, 140
187–188, 192
Riley, Denise, 26, 96
Past, 1, 7, 13–14, 30–31, 36, 38,
46–49, 52–55, 57, 60–63,
66–67, 75, 82–83, 89–90,
93–95, 101, 119, 144, 161, S
189, 191, 195 Sandberg, Sheryl, 128, 131–133,
Penny, Laurie, 136 163, 167
Personal, 2, 5, 9, 13, 15, 25, 48, 77–82, Saville, Jimmy, 114–115, 158
85, 90, 109–111, 124–126, Second wave, 11, 21, 24, 33–35, 40,
163–164, 168, 171, 191 50–51, 56, 100, 147, 151, 172
Pink List, 172 Seigworth, Gregory J., 82
Postfeminism, 16, 48–49, 64–65, Sexual Assault, 110–117, 122, 127,
127, 145, 147–148 158–160
Present Future, 90 Sex Work, 116
Index 203
Slut Walk, 14, 16, 109–118, 140, 48–49, 51–52, 56–57, 89–90,
141, 150, 155, 157–160, 168, 100, 147, 156, 172, 191, 196
168, 188 Timekeeping, 45–47, 52–53, 89
Social media, 3, 8, 9, 11, 15, 33, Touching times, 46
34, 81–82, 93, 101, 107, 109, Trans, 15, 148, 156, 171–174,
110, 111, 129, 130, 131, 135, 178, 189
141, 165–166, 171, 176–177, Transmission, 31, 53, 60, 74
187, 192 Trauma, 48, 93–94, 123–127
Solidarity, 12, 38, 74, 87, Trolls, 16, 137–139, 165, 166, 189
96–97, 99, 102, 122, Twitter, 8, 15, 119, 122, 123, 126,
127, 138, 151, 162–163, 127, 134, 136, 142, 160, 161,
187–190 165–166, 168, 171, 176
Steubenville, 108, 110
Stonewall, 178 U
Story, 2–3, 6–9, 12, 14, 21–25, 32, USA, 1, 14, 21, 35, 132, 172
36–37, 39, 46–48, 51–59,
63–64, 67, 86, 88, 90, 94–95,
119–120, 125–126, 134, 142, V
161–163, 171 Violence against women, 15, 97,
Suffrage, 38, 56 114–115, 118, 125, 126, 129,
The Sun, 133 132, 138, 146, 150, 160, 168
Visibility, 66, 151, 156, 163, 172, 176
T W
Temporality, 1, 8, 10, 12–13, 22–24, Walker, Rebecca, 23
30–31, 36–38, 40, 45–47, 49, WoC, 4, 51, 52, 156, 167, 190
52–53, 55, 57–58, 60–63, Women Action & The Media, 129
65–68, 73, 75, 77, 82–86, Women’s Equality Party, 179
89–91, 93–96, 99–102, 107, Women’s Library, 120
115–116, 121, 126–127, WOW Festival, 170
136–137, 156–157, 160–162,
164, 168, 171, 174, 178, 191,
195–196 Y
Temporal others, 52 Yew Tree, 159
TERFs, 174, 190
Testimony, 124, 187
Third wave, 4, 7, 11, 13, 21–24, 26, Z
28–29, 31, 33–35, 37–38, 40, Zuckerberg, Mark, 132

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The Feminist Fourth Wave

The Feminist Fourth

ISBN 978-3-319-53681-1 ISBN 978-3-319-53682-8 (eBook)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

Cover design: Fatima Jamadar

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

Aspects of this book have been presented at various conferences, where

2 The Wave Narrative 21

3 What is feminist time keeping? 45

5 Why Fourth Wave Now? 107

6 Feminist Futurities 155

Recent feminist scholarship, journalism and activism have recognised

© The Author(s) 2017 1

the emergence of a fourth wave, discussing why such a surge in activism

2010. The movements against austerity actually contributed and

acknowledge that in spite of increased online presence, women are still

oﬀering a comprehensive overview. As a moment of activism unfolds,

for such omissions to exist. These structures become especially rigid in

genesis of movements for women’s rights’ (2010: 76). It is perhaps that

understanding of waves forces a consideration of speciﬁc types of iden-

and encouraging personal experience to become a form of outwardly

The Fourth Wave

currently that might be signiﬁcantly altered by the creation of a new

constituting this contemporary, they illuminate ways in which feeling

backlash, which seems to be unfolding simultaneous to this wave of

demonstrates how the once useful rhetoric of feminism has been

With the emergence of fourth-wave feminism being addressed in the media

© The Author(s) 2017 21

Unsurprisingly, then, they might perceive the declaration of a new wave as

to the cohesiveness of feminism. While it seems to gesture to a much

Using the Wave: A Case Study

positioned it as a waving in greeting or parting (2010). These examples go some way to

and interest.3 Walker’s partner is immediately concerned with the

experience becomes a disembodied force, moving from the internal to

Understanding the Waves

traditional understanding of the wave as oceanic, Hewitt claims that

possible that the waves can be understood in a chronological sense, while

counting of the waves does not need to denote a rejection of past

Criticism of the Wave Narrative

generational problem. It prioritises the actions of the young, implying

consciousness rising, with an emphasis on grassroots organisation and

ﬁgureheads speak back to the diﬃculty of a wave being associated with a

The Reconceptualisation of the Wave Narrative

objectives of the individual looking to understand the wave narrative.

temporalities, scholars often ﬁnd themselves relying heavily on the

generation’s need to be visible (2011: 250), undercuts what I see as the

Hewitt, Nancy A. ‘Feminist Frequencies: Regenerating the Wave Metaphor’

Thomas, Clarence (2008) My Grandfather’s Son: A Memoir. New York: Harper

My previous chapter focuses on the wave narrative’s ongoing eﬃcacy, in

© The Author(s) 2017 45

timekeeping and feminist temporality require a diﬀerent form of engage-

Feminists and Queer Theorists on Time

children, and establishing normative family models, queer theory opens

especially eﬀective postfeminism assimilates feminist politics, making

Through championing intersectionality, the third wave positions itself as

historical ‘othering’, ensuring that intersectionality is not just practised

each wave logically follows its predecessor, uncomplicatedly inheriting

Browne oﬀers an interesting and useful reading of history, in which she

politics, we prioritise those who are attempting measurable progress, as

In addition to the wave, feminism has a number of narratives which

There is much disagreement over whether an all-encompassing narra-

while feminism places an emphasis on futurity, it hopes to be without a