Third Wave Madres

by: Sheilah Dasher 


Third Wave Feminism, gave a voice to me. She gave a voice to women with skin like mine, eyes that burned like coals instead of midday sky’s, she gave a voice to the madres that bent over tomatoes groves the brown, red, and black women whose bridges no longer would be their backs the red light district women, and the mail order brides of every western man’s dreams, the women that love other women, or the one’s not born female. Third wave feminism announced “I am here, I exist!” I am not “The Feminine Mystic,” “The Problem Which Has No Name,” I am the wet nurse that fed First and Second Waves children while she was dreaming, I am the woman that cleaned her floors, the woman that was bought on that business trip by her husband I am the one that fought not to be sterilized while she wanted contraception. Third Wave proclaimed we are not all equal in the eyes of men I am the daughter of Third Wave Feminism. A decade ago, I bought the book Colonize This. The white queer grrl’s in the feminist movement that I had adopted had introduced me to the works of Lourde and Anzaluda. These white grrl’s that screamed like me out of the constraints of pretty girl gender performance, like me were also getting beat up by the racist skinhead white boys at punk rocks shows. My riot grrl sisters were the one’s that taught me their was a name for my mothers experiences. These gracious grrls over a decade ago reminded me of a past I had forgotten through whitewashed junior high and high school literature. Reading these works were like reading my life. My introduction to feminism was always inclusive not exclusive and had a growling guitar vocalist. Feminism to me wasn’t academic, or didn’t look white and middle class. Much like the reading by Adriana Lopez, In Praise of Difficult Chicas, she spoke of the strong mothers she had around her as her first feminist examples. “Education in American schools and universities, I recognized the legacy of white feminist like Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer. Though at times their styles were overheated, they were crusaders for equal rights, bra burning privileged white women who took on a firestorm,” but these women didn’t represent herstory. Feminism to me was my mother and my aunts that left the reservation to attend college. All having children of various racial backgrounds, teaching us our language and matrilineal histories. All independent yet interdependent on one another. I didn’t grow up playing barbie or bridesmaids because that wasn’t my culture. I grew up not having my gender hinder what choices I made because we were all taught to work hard equally men and women. My feminism was my grandmother that went to library classes to learn to read and write in English after raising ten children. I grew up realizing women always had the right to own their sexuality, to marry or divorce, wedlock or not. I grew up with a grandmother that said get an education and use birth control because she knew it would give me the access she did not have. In Colonize This When Cristina Tzintzun speaks of her mothers wishes for her daughters, saying “she could not have hoped for more feisty, self-assured daughters.” I see my own mother, not wanting me to be afraid to speak in front of foreigners and not be as naive as she was. Much like the Third Wave warriors of various backgrounds our stories are interwoven and political no matter how personal.