Julie Marie Wade: “I happily identify as a feminist and more specifically, a third-wave feminist. I grew up in a family that adhered to strict gender roles and regarded liberation movements, particularly ‘women’s lib,’ with suspicion. In 1997, I arrived at college with the false impression that feminism was something that already happened, a social movement that had come and gone. To my surprise and delight, this was not the case. I read Rebecca Walker’s Becoming the Third Wave and Naomi Wolf’s Radical Heterosexuality. Slowly, it dawned on me that feminism was still alive and well, and I wanted desperately to be a part of this third wave my new feminist heroes described. To me, feminism is about more than equality, which often conjures notions of ‘sameness,’ but rather about justice, which seeks to honor and protect individual integrity and complexity within and beyond the category of gender. One of my early mentors once said to me: ‘If there are two people—one physically agile and one confined to a wheelchair—and you ask them both to climb the same flight of stairs in the same amount of time—you are treating them equally, but you are not treating them justly.’ This example has always stayed with me. Feminism’s first wave centered on women’s equality, but the third wave encompasses the pursuit of justice for all marginalized groups, including people of color, people with disabilities, sexual minorities, and the earth itself.”
