A Young White Male Addresses Sexism, Feminism, and the Modern Conception of Beauty

“Becoming the Third Wave” by Rebecca Walker is an essay that is believed that have helped mark the beginning of the Third Wave Feminist movement. I think that I should point out that I found the essay to be comically ironic. In it she discusses how she was boarding a bus one time and there was a pair of black men talking about women that they had just had sex with and other “hoes” that they were going to sleep with. Walker hears this discussion and hears how they are demeaning and sexualizing women as merely objects of desire and she rightfully takes a stand and says something to the two men. However, her ending paragraph reads, “Do not vote for them (men) unless they work for us. Do not have sex with them, do not break bread with them, do not nurture them if they don’t prioritize our freedom to control (emphasis added) our bodies and our lives. I am not postfeminism feminist. I am the Third Wave.” [15] The bitter irony in the piece is the fact that Walker is criticizing men for viewing women simply as sex objects and then she is in favor of a policy (no sexual morals) that is why men view women simply as sex objects.

If you would ask me I would say that the biggest problem facing women today is their blatant sexualization. Sexualization differs from sexuality because sexualization is “treating other people or oneself as objects of sexual desire…as things rather than as people with sexual feelings of their own.” [16] That is the biggest problem that women are facing today. How do they be more than simply objects used for sex? My recommendation would be to embrace a sexually moral agenda, to be frugal in who you have sex with, to restrict it only to men that you are dating or care about. Third Wave Feminists would disagree with me and they would probably say that I am trying to “oppress women in the sexual arena by taking away their liberties. That women deserve the sexual freedom that men have.” Third Wave feminists would not want for women to have to change themselves and be prudent because of the double-standard that exists, they want to abolish the double standard. They want for there to be no difference between a whore and a virgin. They want for women to have unyielding liberties in the sexual arena and I would have to disagree with them. The problem will only keep growing and women will become more and more objects of sexual desire if they look at themselves and allow themselves casual sex with whomever only for pleasure.