http://www.thefword.org.uk/features/...eminism_still_
On one hand, feminist theory itself can feel like reading another language (looking at you Butler), but on the other hand I don't feel its totally impossible to get through, especially literature from the second wave. The second wave movement WAS dominated by the white and middle class who didn't give two shits about anyone else (Betty Friedan, for example, was paranoid lesbians would take over NOW. NOW's manifesto mentioned nothing about race, class or sexuality). But there was a lot of feminists of colour/womanists, queer feminists, radfems and revolutionary feminists who, angry at being ignored, were able to create their own movements and theories, and they created a lot of accessible literature that is arguably far more relevant today than something like
The Feminine Mystique. I disagree with the article when it says feminist literature is too academic and hard to understand, its just that what gets promoted isn't what you need to hear.
The reason the movement at large seems to have no teeth and only acts up when every woman's rights are getting stepped on (such as recently with all the crazy abortion laws), is that unless it affects white middle class women, the movement at large doesn't give two shits. When things are fine, they don't care about poverty or racism. The accessible literature that gets promoted is more likely to whine about women CEO's not getting paid as much as male CEOs rather than point out the economic oppression in our capitalist society (ALTHOUGH, books like
Half The Sky are more than willing to point out the economic oppression in other countries, and how loans and kind capitalism can save them.). No one complains about capitalism because those with the biggest audiences have a stake in capitalism and have privilege to protect, even if they do tout the word "intersectionality" now and then.
And this goes back to that thread about how less educated you are, the more right wing you are, but its not just that "they're stupid," its that, what has the left really done in the last thirty years to prove that they really give two shits about the great unwashed and uneducated?