Fittstim Feminists and Third Wave Feminists: A Shared Identity between Scandinavia and the United States?

Abstract

Feminist Studies 40, no. 3. © 2014 by Astrid Henry 659 Astrid Henry Fittstim Feminists and Third Wave Feminists: A Shared Identity between Scandinavia and the United States? It can sound really 1970s-ish that women should be strong and set boundaries and fight for their rights. But the fact is, we live in the same patriarchal society in the year 2000 that we did in the 1970s. —Rie Grønbech, contributor to the Danish collection Enough Is Enough1 “Have you heard about Fittstim?” asked the Swedish woman who approached me at the end of my talk on US Third Wave feminism. It was 1999, and I was finishing my dissertation on generational relationships within US feminism. Fittstim: the word was a mystery because I didn’t know Swedish, but having grown up speaking Danish (and English), I was intrigued. Fittstim, the Swedish woman told me, was a recent book that had created a media firestorm in Sweden because of its bold representation of a new group of Swedish feminists—women the same age as the third wavers I was studying in the United States.2 1. Rie Grønbech, “Hertil og Ikke Længere” [No further], in Nu Er Det Nok. Så Er Det Sagt [Enough is enough], ed. Anita Frank Goth, Karen MacLean, Lene Myong Petersen, and Katrina Schelin (Copenhagen: Rosinante Forlag, 2000), 134. 2. Throughout this essay I use the term Third Wave both to reference the self-chosen label of a particular group of writers and as a kind of generational shorthand. However, the term and the larger waves metaphor used to describe feminist history are not without criticism. For discussion of the waves metaphor and its use within US feminist historiography, see: 660 Astrid Henry I eventually learned the provocative meaning of the word “fittstim” and also began to explore contemporary feminist writing from Scandinavia —writing that has largely been unrecognized (and untranslated) in the United States. I discovered a rich body of work that echoes many of the themes of US Third Wave feminist texts and even appropriates the term “third wave” in certain cases. Yet comparing these two sets of writing also reveals some major differences that help to shed light on the sociopolitical realities of the Nordic countries and the United States. In this essay I will focus on two of these differences: one, the role of intersectionality , racial and ethnic diversity, and antiracist politics in shaping this new feminism; and, two, the role of the state in fulfilling the feminist project. I propose that comparing these Scandinavian and US texts gives us a deeper understanding of feminism in both cultures and enables us to understand how feminist ideology, movements, and generations are shaped by larger political, regional, and demographic concerns . Ultimately, as I will argue, “Fittstim-feminists” and US Third Wave feminists have important lessons to learn from each other.3 Feminist Publishing in the 1990s and 2000s The parallel between the two movements begins with their appearance at the end of the twentieth century. In the early 1990s, a group of young writers in the United States began calling themselves “Third Wave feminists ,” describing themselves both as the inheritors of the Second Wave movement of the 1960s and 70s and as being distinct from it.4 This dual Kathleen A. Laughlin et al., “Is It Time to Jump Ship? Historians Rethink the Waves Metaphor,” Feminist Formations 22, no. 1 (2010): 76–135; Nancy A. Hewitt, “Feminist Frequencies: Regenerating the Wave Metaphor,” Feminist Studies 38, no. 3 (2012): 658–680; and Astrid Henry, “Waves,” in Rethinking Women’s and Gender Studies, ed. Catherine M. Orr, Ann Braithwaite, and Diane Lichtenstein (New York: Routledge, 2012), 102–118. 3. The term “Fittstim-feminist” has been used both by commentators on this new generation of Scandinavian feminists and by such feminists themselves. For example, Christina Grøntved, the editor of the Danish edition of Fittstim , said, “I am not a feminist. I am a Fittstim-feminist.” Quoted in Annette Nielsen, “The ‘Cunt Cascade’ Takes on Denmark,” News from NIKK 2, no. 4 (1999): 4. 4. See Astrid Henry, Not My Mother’s Sister: Generational Conflict and ThirdWave Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004); and Deborah...