It's Not Feminism, It's Humanism

Third-Wave Feminism

Introduction
By the 1990s, some of the views and positions of second-wave feminism were facing backlash, which eventually developed into the movement known as third-wave feminism. Highly critical of the way the feminist movement had mainly seemed to serve white, middle-class women, third-wave feminists were keen to ket diverse women tell their own unique stories. Their thinking was that feminism had to represent all types of women, actively including those of all colours, ethnicities, religions, occupations, and sexualities.
Feminism has always enjoyed strong links with socialism and anti-capitalist movements. With third-wave feminism this connection took shape through association with the riot grrrl subculture, a movement with anti-corporate and punk values. Placing importance on adolescent girl's standpoint, the root grrrl movement included home-made zines, political actions, bands, and activism.
Third-wave feminists continued their predecessors' work on raising awareness about the issues of rape and domestic violence and how the political system could work harder to protect victims of both those issues.
They were also interested in reversing some of the strict black and white regulations of second-wave feminists, preferring to reclaim issues that had previously been seen as problematic rather than brand them 'antifeminist'. For example, they attempted to give words like 'bitch' a positive, powerful connotation, preferring to subvert the meaning in an empowering way rather than to censor the word itself.

Boiling Point
Second-wave feminists had seen many political victories, and by the nineties many people thought that the legal system was now largely fair to both genders. While there were still battles to be won in that arena, more and more feminists were turning their attention to social change on a smaller scale, such as reclaiming language, defeating stereotypes, and changing media depiction of women.
Although clearly influenced by second-wave feminism's mantra that 'the personal is political', third-wave feminism wanted to move away from the prescriptive attitudes of its predecessors and towards the idea of freedom to choose. Previously topics such as porn or gender had strict dos and don'ts for what was good for women. For example, pornography was always seen to be oppressing the woman, even if the woman thought she wanted to partake in or watch it. This particular debate was fought in the rather gloriously named 'feminist sex wars' (also known by the similarly flamboyant title of 'porn wars'). The boiled down argument focussed on whether a woman, living in a patriarchal society where she is nurtured to think a certain way about how women should behave and please men, could ever be able to truly make an independent decision to participate in porn. Some also felt that second-wave feminists' criticisms about sexual oppression actually themselves oppressed women. For example, second-wave feminists discredited the idea that a woman could genuinely enjoy sadomasochism, refusing the idea that it could be participated in healthy and be a natural, personal kink.
Works such as bell hooks' Ain't I a Woman and Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior had explored the possibilities for the discussion of race in combination with gender. Queer theory was rising to prominence and its rejection of simply two genders -man and woman - and two sexualities - gay and straight - meant that the more binary views of sexuality in second-wave feminism were now also in need of updating.

Slogan
Queer Theory
Coined as a term in 1990 by feminist academic Teresa de Lauretis, queer theory placed assumptions about sexuality and gender under the microscope. Feminism has already cast a light on the idea of 'natural' gender behaviour, with many key arguments hinging on the idea that women aren't in the oppressed position they're in because of natural weakness or inferiority. Instead, research has been shown that women have the biological potential to be equal to men in many ways, but social norms, laws, and lack of opportunity have stood in their way. Studies introduced ideas such as the theory that parents pushing their children to play with gendered toys meant children learned to act a certain way according to whether they were a boy or a girl, which was then taken to mean they were 'naturally' feminine/masculine.
Queer theory took that idea to the next level. The name itself is typical of third-wave feminism. Traditionally used as a slur, queer theorists repurposed the word 'queer' as an umbrella term to mean 'difference to the sex and gender norm'. Queer theory meant that if gender and sexuality weren't predetermined, then people of any gender didn't have to act in a certain way, according to whether they were a man or woman. This meant there could be space between who someone is and what they do/how they behave.
As well as adding to the developing idea that a person could be a feminist and still partake in activities that had previously been thought to objectify women, as long as they did it with full awareness of context and free will, queer theory also opened the way for transwomen to be accepted in the feminist movement. If gender was no longer simply defined as a biological trait, then it became easier to accept that a person could identify as a female even if she was born biologically male.