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Nausea and feminism both often come in waves. Understanding feminism in terms of waves is essential to understand feminist thought and its assimilation of Marxist and communist ideas. It is easy to see how someone might not think of feminism as a movement. We might question whether feminism is best described as a movement or simply as an ideology. Certainly feminism is an ideology, as in a system of ideas within political theory or policy.
Clearly, it has a firm grasp on our political and educational system and a strong influence on public opinion. Feminism isn’t so much fighting the oppressive system: it is the system. What’s more, feminism has in mind a revolution to overthrow, dismantle or smash the system created by its perceived oppressors. The word movement brings to mind a societal change, not the destruction of society.
Yet, feminism, like Marxism/communism, sees itself as progressing in waves of permanent revolution. Each wave is a movement within a broader permanent revolution. Even after complete state and economic control, there is still the movement for further refinement, correction and more revolutions, where yesterday’s heroes are today’s oppressors.
When applied to feminism, the term wave is a term borrowed from Marxist/communist thought. It alludes to the Marxist suggestion that a simple, one-time revolution cannot destroy the old system and put another in its place overnight. To do this, the revolution must happen in waves, progress through stages until there is complete control of the state and economy. From this point, the revolution is thought of continuing in further waves of permanent refinement to the system. This is the communist idea of continual revolution.
In both feminist and communist philosophy, the first wave is simply the oppressed becoming aware that they are oppressed, gaining class or group cohesion and identifying their oppressors. In feminism, first wave feminism is so-called retroactively from the 1960’s during second wave feminism, and refers to the suffragette movement. Feminism draws the comparison and retroactively describes this movement as women becoming aware of their oppression and identifying their oppressors. Under communism, the oppressors are identified as the Bourgeoisie, and under feminism, The Patriarchy.
The philosophies behind the stages of the creation of communism, Marxism and feminism are varied. What they have in common is that one single revolution overthrowing the oppressive class is not possible, there must be waves of revolution. These waves must be of destruction of the old system and alternating waves of growth of the new. This is where we find communist/Marxist slogans like Dismantle the Bourgeois state and the correlating feminist slogans Dismantle The Patriarchy (or alternatively Smash The Patriarchy).
We see that feminism is a carbon copy of communism/Marxism, both sharing a central feature of “waves” and that even after complete control, the waves of permanent revolution continue. Each wave is described as a smaller movement, or smaller revolution, not changing but destroying the old system and creating a new one. Feminism is a series of movements that use communism/Marxism as a blueprint. When we understand this blueprint, we understand how the waves of feminism are movements of revolution within feminist ideology.
