Third-wave feminism is a feminist movement that began in the early 1990s, prominent in the decades prior to the fourth wave. Grounded in the civil-rights advances of the second wave, Gen X third-wave feminists born in the 1960s and 1970s embraced diversity and individualism in women, and sought to redefine what it meant to be a feminist. The third wave saw the emergence of new feminist currents and theories, such as intersectionality, sex positivity, vegetarian ecofeminism, transfeminism, and postmodern feminism. According to feminist scholar Elizabeth Evans, the "confusion surrounding what constitutes third-wave feminism is in some respects its defining feature."
Catherine Hall is a British academic. She is Emerita Professor of Modern British Social and Cultural History at University College London and chair of its digital scholarship project, the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery. Her work as a feminist historian focuses on the 18th and 19th centuries, and the themes of gender, class, race, and empire.
Nancy Colbert Friday was an American author who wrote on the topics of female sexuality and liberation. Her writings argue that women have often been reared under an ideal of womanhood, which was outdated and restrictive, and largely unrepresentative of many women's true inner lives, and that openness about women's hidden lives could help free women to truly feel able to enjoy being themselves. She asserts that this is not due to deliberate malice, but due to social expectation, and that for women's and men's benefit alike it is healthier that both be able to be equally open, participatory and free to be accepted for who and what they are.
Virago is a British publisher of women's writing and books on feminist topics. Started and run by women in the 1970s and bolstered by the success of the Women's Liberation Movement (WLM), Virago has been credited as one of several British feminist presses that helped address inequitable gender dynamics in publishing. Unlike alternative, anti-capitalist publishing projects and political pamphlets coming out of feminist collectives and socialist circles, Virago branded itself as a commercial alternative to the male-dominated publishing industry and sought to compete with mainstream international presses.
Shameless is a Canadian magazine with a feminist and anti-oppressive practice perspective for girls and trans youth. It is published three times a year and also maintains a website featuring a blog, web stories and audio content. Shameless is a registered not-for-profit.
Spare Rib was a second-wave feminist magazine, founded in 1972 in the United Kingdom, that emerged from the counterculture of the late 1960s as a consequence of meetings involving, among others, Rosie Boycott and Marsha Rowe. Spare Rib is now recognised as having shaped debates about feminism in the UK, and as such it was digitised by the British Library in 2015. The magazine contained new writing and creative contributions that challenged stereotypes and supported collective solutions that related to feminist issues. It was published between 1972 and 1993. The title derives from the Biblical reference to Eve, the first woman, created from Adam's rib.
Jessica Valenti is an American feminist writer. She was the co-founder of the blog Feministing, which she wrote for from 2004 to 2011. Valenti is the author of six books: Full Frontal Feminism (2007), He's a Stud, She's a Slut (2008), The Purity Myth (2009), Why Have Kids? (2012), Sex Object: A Memoir (2016), and Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, and the Truths We Use to Win (2024). She also co-edited the books Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape (2008), Believe Me: How Trusting Women Can Change the World (2020). Between 2014 and 2018, Valenti was a columnist for The Guardian. She currently runs the Abortion, Every Day newsletter on Substack. The Washington Post described her as "one of the most successful and visible feminists of her generation".
Feministing.com was a feminist blog founded in 2004 by sisters Jessica and Vanessa Valenti. It had 1.2 million unique monthly visitors at its peak. The blog helped to popularize the term slut-shaming according to its directors Lori Adelman and Maya Dusenbery. Towards the end of 2019 it was announced that the blog's shutdown was planned for the following weeks. The blog's final post was published in December 2019.
Feminist Mormon Housewives (fMh) is a group blog, podcast, and Facebook group featuring commentary and discussion on contemporary Mormon culture and women's issues. According to The New York Times, "Unlike the more mainstream Mormon blogs – known collectively as the Bloggernacle – that by and large promote the faith, this online diary focuses on the universal challenges of mothering young children and on frustration with the limited roles women have in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."
Catherine Mayer is an American-born British author and journalist, and the co-founder and President of the Women's Equality Party (WE) in the UK.
A feminist blog presents the issues of feminism through a blog. These websites emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and focus on issues such as gender equality, women's rights, and social justice, among other topics related to feminism. These platforms offer unique perspectives and insights, providing a voice for feminist discourse and activism in the digital age.
Mandy Van Deven is a philanthropy consultant — with particular emphasis on gender, racial, and economic justice and fortifying the infrastructure for narrative power. She is a contributor to Inside Philanthropy, the co-author of “Hey, Shorty! A Guide to Combating Sexual Harassment and Violence in School and on the Streets” (2011) and the editor of Polyphonic Feminisms: Acting in Concert. She has written for Salon, The Guardian, Refinery29, GlobalPost, Marie Claire (India), and Newsweek.
Julie Zeilinger is an American author and writer. Her books include A Little F'd Up: Why Feminism is Not a Dirty Word (2012) and she founded the feminist blog The FBomb in 2009, which partnered with the Women's Media Center in 2014 to become the online platform WMC FBomb.
Kate Smurthwaite is a British comedian and political activist. She has appeared on British television and radio as a pundit, offering opinion and comment on subjects ranging from politics to religion.
Networked feminism is a phenomenon that can be described as the online mobilization and coordination of feminists in response to sexist, misogynistic, racist, and other discriminatory acts against minority groups. This phenomenon covers all possible definitions of what feminist movements may entail, as there have been multiple waves of feminist movements and there is no central authority to control what the term "feminism" claims to be. While one may hold a different opinion from another on the definition of "feminism", all those who believe in these movements and ideologies share the same goal of dismantling the current patriarchal social structure, where men hold primary power and higher social privileges above all others.
The Vagenda was a feminist online magazine launched in January 2012. It used the tagline "Like King Lear, but for girls," taken from Grazia magazine's summary of the film The Iron Lady, starring Meryl Streep. The Vagenda was run by British journalists Holly Baxter and Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett; it was founded by ten London-based women journalists in their twenties and was then written by a large group of anonymous contributors from all over the world, both women and men. The editors stated: "the women's press is a large hadron collider of bullshit, and something needed to be done". Cosslett describes The Vagenda as "a media watchdog with a feminist angle". In its last issue, July 2015, it announced a 'summer hiatus' in publication.
An edit-a-thon is an event where some editors of online communities such as Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, and LocalWiki edit and improve a specific topic or type of content. The events typically include basic editing training for new editors and may be combined with a more general social meetup. The word is a portmanteau of "edit" and "marathon". An edit-a-thon can either be "in-person" or online or a blended version of both. If it is not in-person, it is usually called a "virtual edit-a-thon" or "online edit-a-thon".
TERF is an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist. First recorded in 2008, the term TERF was originally used to distinguish transgender-inclusive feminists from a group of radical feminists who reject the position that trans women are women, reject the inclusion of trans women in women's spaces, and oppose transgender rights legislation. Trans-inclusive feminists assert that these ideas and positions are transphobic and discriminatory towards transgender people. The use of the term TERF has since broadened to include reference to people with trans-exclusionary views who are not necessarily involved with radical feminism. In the 2020s, the term "trans-exclusionary radical feminism" is used synonymously with or overlaps with "gender-critical feminism".
Minna Salami is a Finnish Nigerian journalist and owner/editor of the website MsAfropolitan.com, which she created in 2010 to write on themes "ranging from polygamy to feminism to relationships". She was also a regular contributor to The Guardian and contributed two articles to Aljazeera.com. She is a member of the Global Educator Network of Duke University, the Africa Network and The Guardian Books Network.
Meghan Emily Murphy is a Canadian writer, journalist, and founder of Feminist Current, a feminist website and podcast. Her writing, speeches, and talks have criticized third-wave feminism, male feminists, the sex industry, exploitation of women in mass media, censorship, and gender identity legislation. She is based in Vancouver.