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Feminist Fatale: Voices from Twentysomething Generation Explore Future Women's Movement
Interviews with young women from a wide range of backgrounds highlight a look into the issues and future of the women's movement
- GenresFeminism
416 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published October 15, 1991
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July 30, 2025
A SUMMARY OF INTERVIEWS WITH VARIOUS WOMEN ABOUT FEMINISM
Journalist and author Paula Kamen wrote in the Introduction to this 1991 book, “In the early 1970s, feminists rallied under the self-assured slogan, ‘Sisterhood Is Powerful.’ Nearly twenty years later, as I contemplated my generation---the twentysomething generation of young women---I found myself wondering if sisterhood was even possible. When I was in college… the word that more accurately summed up the condition of young women and feminism was ‘isolation.’ I quickly learned that taking a stand on anything even remotely construed as a women’s issue aroused strange and strong suspicions … As a columnist for the … student newspaper… I thought I could escape the feminist stigma by buffering these columns with other topics, but still, by the time my second ‘women’s’ column appeared in … 1988, I was branded. People I met began to treat me like a radical separatist Marxist; a co-columnist labeled me ‘feminist fatale.’… Others asked why I hated men so much. Even when I retreated home for the holidays, certain folks … cautioned I was jeopardizing my future by scaring off potential male suitors.” (Pg. 1-2)
She continues, “Since then, my feminist consciousness has grown, as has my bewilderment at the apparent absence of a vocal young feminist voice… Young feminists have been remarkably unchronicled and, as a result, misunderstood… Part of the reason young feminists have gone unrecognized for so long by others is that we have been dismissed along with the rest of the women’s movement… Also, feminist magazines and newspapers have hardly touched upon the issue of passing the torch to the next generation. As older feminists grapple with their identity crisis, younger feminists suffer from a lack of one.” (Pg. 2)
She explains, “Writing this book has been a journey from isolation with feminism, both personally and geographically. In tracking down people my age, I traveled…across America… I have found subjects mainly through shameless, ceaseless, heavy-duty networking with friends, acquaintances of friends, sisters of neighbors of friends of friends, social service agencies, college campuses, technical schools… and whomever I happened to be sitting next to on a given day on the bus.” (Pg. 15-16)
She goes on, “The 236 people I interviewed included 103 people in the core group of nonactivists, 74 activists, and 28 ‘feminists,’ who were most often quoted specifically in relation to their attendance of a women’s college or their enrollment in women’s studies classes. Also included were 31 older people, who were both activist and nonactivist. I talked with both men and women of different classes, races, religions, and sexual orientations, from urban and rural parts of the country. My sample group was defined as the twentysomethings, the Baby Busters… people who generally fall in the age group between 18 and 30, born between 1960 and 1972.” (Pg. 16)
She adds, “In the selection of people interviewed… Essential are the voices of women of color and low-income women… I also interviewed young men to reflect another voice that must be heard. The reason is simple. Women just can’t do it alone. Men are our friends, our companions, our fathers, our brothers, our sons, the ones who get us pregnant, those we often shamelessly spill our guts to. By creating a dialogue together, we can learn to better respect each other.” (Pg. 16-17) She adds, “I have also interviewed some older women… I have talked to veteran activists… housewives, working women, people with careers… They can provide criticism and comparison of us and create a sense of history, which my generation is sadly lacking.” (Pg. 17-18)
She clarifies, “[I] differ from scientists, and most other journalists… in injecting myself into my research. The story of my generation and the women’s movement is undeniably being told from my personal perspective… Though I express my opinions while telling the story, my goal isn’t to convert anyone. I’m no feminist missionary on a crusade to reform the backward and apolitical… My only agenda is to get readers to ask some new questions.” (Pg. 19)
She records, “‘Ironically, the media myth in the late Sixties was ‘This will never get off the ground,’ Robin Morgan said. ‘Then consistently… Time magazine would run a story saying, ‘Okay, now the women’s movement is dead. Surely it’s dead. Isn’t it dead yet?’ It’s always been wishful thinking. Then they came up with the term ‘postfeminist.’ It’s hilarious. They have been prematurely and erroneously predicting our death for the last twenty years.” (Pg. 64)
She notes, “Young people also may define ‘women’s issues’ differently according to a changing world. ‘You can bet it will go beyond reproductive rights or reproductive freedoms,’ Spencer Robinson said. ‘It will go to equality, to equal pay for equal worth to comparable worth. It’s going to include housing and the environment and it’s going to include economic justice and all those things, because that’s what we care about. And because these are the times we live in. It’s very different from the Sixties.’’ (Pg. 85)
She recounts, “The only adult magazine taking an obviously feminist stand, Ms., [has been] an institution of the women’s movement since 1972… During the Eighties, it matured with the Sixties generation that constituted its readership. Those few people I interviewed who had read Ms. during that time said it went over their heads or seemed too old for them. I also remember reading it in college and definitely not feeling a part of its target audience. I felt I had stumbled upon a diary of older women with numerous references to the Sixties. Even though the perspective of Ms. has become more diverse, young women still see it as a publication whose audience is growing older with it. It is also not uniquely tailored to a young audience as a forum for their experiences, as it was for the older generation.” (Pg. 93)
She states, “From their special perspective on the margins and as more staunch individualists, the younger women interviewed have stated two major criticisms. They do not see older feminisms as having conveyed tolerance for other women’s choices and feel that the past women’s movement universalized the experiences of the white middle class.” (Pg. 121)
She says, “As with other feminist institutions, what was most radical before has now penetrated the mainstream. The first Take Back the Night march was in San Francisco in 1978, undertaken as a stand against pornography and violence against women… The march spread the next year to New York City under the auspices of Women Against Pornography. Take Back the Night is one of the most powerful remnants of the new diminished anti-pornography movement.” (Pg. 299)
This ‘early’ book (published before Rebecca Walker declared the existence of the ‘Third Wave’ of feminism in 1992) will interest those seeking opinions of younger women (although, if born between 1960 and 1972, they are no longer particularly ‘young’!) about feminism.
Journalist and author Paula Kamen wrote in the Introduction to this 1991 book, “In the early 1970s, feminists rallied under the self-assured slogan, ‘Sisterhood Is Powerful.’ Nearly twenty years later, as I contemplated my generation---the twentysomething generation of young women---I found myself wondering if sisterhood was even possible. When I was in college… the word that more accurately summed up the condition of young women and feminism was ‘isolation.’ I quickly learned that taking a stand on anything even remotely construed as a women’s issue aroused strange and strong suspicions … As a columnist for the … student newspaper… I thought I could escape the feminist stigma by buffering these columns with other topics, but still, by the time my second ‘women’s’ column appeared in … 1988, I was branded. People I met began to treat me like a radical separatist Marxist; a co-columnist labeled me ‘feminist fatale.’… Others asked why I hated men so much. Even when I retreated home for the holidays, certain folks … cautioned I was jeopardizing my future by scaring off potential male suitors.” (Pg. 1-2)
She continues, “Since then, my feminist consciousness has grown, as has my bewilderment at the apparent absence of a vocal young feminist voice… Young feminists have been remarkably unchronicled and, as a result, misunderstood… Part of the reason young feminists have gone unrecognized for so long by others is that we have been dismissed along with the rest of the women’s movement… Also, feminist magazines and newspapers have hardly touched upon the issue of passing the torch to the next generation. As older feminists grapple with their identity crisis, younger feminists suffer from a lack of one.” (Pg. 2)
She explains, “Writing this book has been a journey from isolation with feminism, both personally and geographically. In tracking down people my age, I traveled…across America… I have found subjects mainly through shameless, ceaseless, heavy-duty networking with friends, acquaintances of friends, sisters of neighbors of friends of friends, social service agencies, college campuses, technical schools… and whomever I happened to be sitting next to on a given day on the bus.” (Pg. 15-16)
She goes on, “The 236 people I interviewed included 103 people in the core group of nonactivists, 74 activists, and 28 ‘feminists,’ who were most often quoted specifically in relation to their attendance of a women’s college or their enrollment in women’s studies classes. Also included were 31 older people, who were both activist and nonactivist. I talked with both men and women of different classes, races, religions, and sexual orientations, from urban and rural parts of the country. My sample group was defined as the twentysomethings, the Baby Busters… people who generally fall in the age group between 18 and 30, born between 1960 and 1972.” (Pg. 16)
She adds, “In the selection of people interviewed… Essential are the voices of women of color and low-income women… I also interviewed young men to reflect another voice that must be heard. The reason is simple. Women just can’t do it alone. Men are our friends, our companions, our fathers, our brothers, our sons, the ones who get us pregnant, those we often shamelessly spill our guts to. By creating a dialogue together, we can learn to better respect each other.” (Pg. 16-17) She adds, “I have also interviewed some older women… I have talked to veteran activists… housewives, working women, people with careers… They can provide criticism and comparison of us and create a sense of history, which my generation is sadly lacking.” (Pg. 17-18)
She clarifies, “[I] differ from scientists, and most other journalists… in injecting myself into my research. The story of my generation and the women’s movement is undeniably being told from my personal perspective… Though I express my opinions while telling the story, my goal isn’t to convert anyone. I’m no feminist missionary on a crusade to reform the backward and apolitical… My only agenda is to get readers to ask some new questions.” (Pg. 19)
She records, “‘Ironically, the media myth in the late Sixties was ‘This will never get off the ground,’ Robin Morgan said. ‘Then consistently… Time magazine would run a story saying, ‘Okay, now the women’s movement is dead. Surely it’s dead. Isn’t it dead yet?’ It’s always been wishful thinking. Then they came up with the term ‘postfeminist.’ It’s hilarious. They have been prematurely and erroneously predicting our death for the last twenty years.” (Pg. 64)
She notes, “Young people also may define ‘women’s issues’ differently according to a changing world. ‘You can bet it will go beyond reproductive rights or reproductive freedoms,’ Spencer Robinson said. ‘It will go to equality, to equal pay for equal worth to comparable worth. It’s going to include housing and the environment and it’s going to include economic justice and all those things, because that’s what we care about. And because these are the times we live in. It’s very different from the Sixties.’’ (Pg. 85)
She recounts, “The only adult magazine taking an obviously feminist stand, Ms., [has been] an institution of the women’s movement since 1972… During the Eighties, it matured with the Sixties generation that constituted its readership. Those few people I interviewed who had read Ms. during that time said it went over their heads or seemed too old for them. I also remember reading it in college and definitely not feeling a part of its target audience. I felt I had stumbled upon a diary of older women with numerous references to the Sixties. Even though the perspective of Ms. has become more diverse, young women still see it as a publication whose audience is growing older with it. It is also not uniquely tailored to a young audience as a forum for their experiences, as it was for the older generation.” (Pg. 93)
She states, “From their special perspective on the margins and as more staunch individualists, the younger women interviewed have stated two major criticisms. They do not see older feminisms as having conveyed tolerance for other women’s choices and feel that the past women’s movement universalized the experiences of the white middle class.” (Pg. 121)
She says, “As with other feminist institutions, what was most radical before has now penetrated the mainstream. The first Take Back the Night march was in San Francisco in 1978, undertaken as a stand against pornography and violence against women… The march spread the next year to New York City under the auspices of Women Against Pornography. Take Back the Night is one of the most powerful remnants of the new diminished anti-pornography movement.” (Pg. 299)
This ‘early’ book (published before Rebecca Walker declared the existence of the ‘Third Wave’ of feminism in 1992) will interest those seeking opinions of younger women (although, if born between 1960 and 1972, they are no longer particularly ‘young’!) about feminism.
May 9, 2013
This is a solid look at the early 1990s "third wave" of feminism. Good for beginners but will most likely be old hat to those who know about that time period.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews