But who gets to be liberated?
Maybe because I’ve been sat around in hospital waiting rooms, or because I’ve been procrastinating on deadlines…and therefore doing a bit more scrolling than usual…but I've been thinking a lot about who some feminists think feminism is actually for.
Perhaps it’s the BBC’s removal of “Protect The Dolls” from Strictly footage, or the fact that they’re massively plugging the queen of terfs, JK Rowling’s, latest whatever-she’s-bashed-out of her iMac production, and how the bias is depressingly unfeminist. Or it could be the NHS announcing their response to the ECHR guidance, that clearly forgets that trans men exists…
I’ve been reading the fallout and wondering WTAF “feminists” think they’re playing at?
Because it all frankly blows my mind.
Selective solidarity gets on my tits
The lack of cognitive dissonance and the refusal to take on board other people's lived experience, but all the while fighting for their own personal freedom…I feel like I’ve been watching women who’ve spent years demanding autonomy, equality and freedom from patriarchal control suddenly become remarkably fucking selective about who deserves those same things.
I’m fascinated (and repulsed) by the women who rightly recognise misogyny in their own workplaces, relationships and political institutions, but for some reason seem to give considerably less of a shit about the violence and oppression experienced by women elsewhere in the world (Gaza, Congo, Sudan to name just three of a myriad). I’m left completely discombobulated by how women who are demanding the right to define their own lives (smash glass ceilings, #girlboss, child free or trad wife, etc etc) whilst insisting on defining somebody else's (aka trans people) think that’s okay?!
And - pushing my rage and justice obsessions to one side - I keep coming back to the same question: what exactly are we fighting for?
If the ultimate ambition is simply for some women to enjoy the same privileges as powerful men, without challenging the systems that make those privileges possible, then we need to have a much bigger conversation about what liberation actually means. A feminism that centres white women's experiences whilst treating racism, transphobia, colonialism and economic inequality as somebody else's problem has some serious questions to answer, in my opinion. Black feminists have been asking those questions for decades so perhaps it's time more of us listened.
My problem with white feminism
In case you’ve been living under a rock…Black women have been challenging white feminism’s limitations for generations. From the exclusion of Black women in sections of the suffrage movement to the marginalisation of women of colour within mainstream feminist organising (even in the recent debacle with Your Party, DM if you want deets lol), if you care to lift the curtain even just a little, there’s always been tension between the pursuit of equality for some women and the fight for liberation for all.
Years ago i shared a Power of Words email about Sojourner Truth - who many people still have not heard of - who challenged the racist assumptions of nineteenth-century women's rights activism - “Am I not a woman?”. Later, activists including Angela Davis, bell hooks and Audre Lorde examined the ways racism, class and gender oppression intersect, taking a close look at why a feminist movement that centres the experiences of relatively privileged white women will always have significant blind spots.
Kimberlé Crenshaw gave us the language of intersectionality, helping to explain how overlapping systems of discrimination produce experiences that cannot be understood by examining gender, race or other characteristics in isolation.
And yet, here we are, still having the same flipping conversations about whether the rights of certain women should be considered feminist issues at all. (Excuse me while I scream into the abyss. Again)
White feminism, as a political approach, centres the experiences and priorities of white women while completely ignoring overlooking the ways other systems of oppression shape women's lives, treating the experiences of relatively privileged women as universal, with everybody else's concerns relegated to the sidelines.
And to be clear, on the face of it (literally) I'm a white feminist. I'm writing this from within that position, knowing that I benefit from racial privilege even as I experience sexism. Being white doesn't automatically make somebody a practitioner of white feminism, but it does mean we have a responsibility to examine the ways our own privilege influences what we notice, what we challenge and what we're shoving our fingers in our ears over (AKA ignoring). I might have grown up receiving food parcels from charity, in a single-parent family, but - as a white person - I still have masses of privilege.
It's relatively easy to demand equality when that means gaining something for ourselves. However, it's considerably harder when solidarity asks us to confront our own prejudices, challenge institutions from which we benefit or stand alongside people whose struggles don't directly affect us.
You cannot dismantle patriarchy by policing womanhood
One of the most frustrating contradictions within contemporary feminism is the insistence by some feminists that trans rights are somehow incompatible with women's rights.
I understand that there are debates about sex, gender...but the idea that the broader struggle for trans people's dignity, safety and freedom represents a threat to feminism deserves serious scrutiny. Actually, I CALL BULLSHIT.
For generations, feminists have challenged the idea that biology should determine our opportunities, our behaviour, our place in society or the limits of our freedom. And we've fought against rigid expectations of femininity, against institutions that police women's bodies and against the assumption that somebody else should have the authority to decide how we live. So why would we want to reproduce that policing ourselves, eh?
Trans women experience misogyny, discrimination and violence. Trans people more broadly face significant barriers to safety, healthcare and participation in public life. Their experiences may differ from those of cisgender women, but difference has never been a convincing argument for withholding solidarity.
Our feminist movement ought to be capable of recognising that women's experiences are diverse without treating that diversity as a problem. And when feminist language is used to justify excluding or humiliating trans people, we should be asking whose interests that exclusion ultimately serves. Patriarchal power has always depended, I believe, on enforcing narrow ideas about gender and punishing those who refuse to conform.
Why on earth would we help uphold this nonsense?!
Where is our feminism when women are being bombed, displaced and brutalised?
There is another contradiction that I find increasingly difficult to stomach, especially since 2023.
We talk, rightly, about the rise in violence against women and girls. We campaign for safer streets, stronger protections, reproductive autonomy and an end to sexual violence. We demand that women's lives be valued and that those responsible for harming them be held accountable (ahem, sidenote to Cornell: essay writing isn’t a suitable consequence for SA).
But where does that commitment go when the women experiencing violence live somewhere else outside of “western” culture? What happens to our feminist solidarity when the women in question are Palestinian, Sudanese or Congolese…? Women in Gaza have experienced devastating loss, displacement and the destruction of essential infrastructure, including services needed for pregnancy, childbirth and reproductive healthcare. Women in Sudan have endured conflict-related sexual violence, forced displacement and catastrophic humanitarian conditions. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, women and girls have faced sexual violence and displacement amid decades of conflict and insecurity.
These are feminist issues, are they not?
Access to safe maternity care is a feminist issue. The ability to raise your children without fear of violence is a feminist issue. Freedom from sexual violence is a feminist issue. Having somewhere safe to live, enough food to eat and access to healthcare are feminist issues. The fact that these experiences are shaped by war, geopolitics, colonisation and international power relations doesn't make them any less relevant to feminism.
Of course, I get it, nobody can campaign on every issue or possess an encyclopaedic understanding of every conflict. Solidarity doesn't require omniscience, and silence on a particular issue isn't automatically evidence of indifference. But I do think we have to ask why some women's suffering becomes a rallying cry whilst other women's suffering barely registers in our collective consciousness.
Why do we so readily recognise violence against women when it happens close to home, but sometimes struggle to extend the same moral urgency to women whose lives are shaped by conflicts in which Western governments and institutions have political, military or economic interests?
Whose suffering is considered sufficiently relatable to deserve our outrage? And what exactly does that tell us about the limits of our feminism?
Patriarchy doesn't operate in isolation
This is where intersectionality becomes so important! Patriarchy doesn't exist in some sealed compartment, entirely separate from racism, capitalism, colonialism or other systems of oppression. These structures interact, reinforce one another and shape who has access to power, resources and safety.
A disabled woman navigating an inaccessible healthcare system faces barriers that cannot be explained by sexism alone. A migrant woman whose immigration status is dependent on an abusive partner may face additional obstacles to escaping violence. A trans woman experiencing discrimination in employment or healthcare may encounter overlapping forms of exclusion. By only examining gender in these cases, we’re missing an enormous part of the picture.
So when feminism ignores those intersections, it risks reproducing the very hierarchies it claims to oppose. We've seen this throughout history, particularly when privileged women have secured greater access to education, employment, political representation and institutional power without necessarily challenging the conditions experienced by women with less economic or social privilege.
There is nothing inherently wrong with women gaining positions of power. Representation matters. But the presence of women in powerful institutions doesn't automatically make those institutions more just. Thatcher is a fantastic example of a woman occupying a position of enormous authority whilst supporting policies that explicitly harmed other women. A CEO identifying as a woman can preside over exploitative working conditions or become a billionaire. A woman (looking at you, Kemi) in political office can defend systems that deepen inequality.
If the goal is simply to ensure that women have an equal opportunity to exercise power over others, we've set our ambitions depressingly low.
The uncomfortable business of solidarity
I think this is where those of us who are white feminists have some particularly important work to do.
It's tempting to imagine ourselves as inherently progressive because we believe in women's equality. We might campaign against misogyny, challenge sexist behaviour, support women in leadership and consider ourselves firmly on the side of social justice, but none of that makes us immune to racism, transphobia or the temptation to prioritise our own comfort.
Recognising that can be super uncomfortable.
It means listening when Black women tell us that our feminism has failed to acknowledge their lived experiences. It means taking seriously the concerns of women whose lives are shaped by poverty, disability, migration or racial discrimination. It means recognising that trans women's rights and safety deserve our attention and support. It also means being prepared to examine the role our own governments, institutions and economic systems play in the oppression of women beyond our borders.
Solidarity requires us to question people we admire, it asks us to challenge organisations we belong to or reconsider positions we've held for years to make space for newer voices and stories.
It requires a willingness to be wrong, to learn and to change and requires us to recognise that somebody else's liberation doesn't diminish our own. There’s no finite amount of dignity, safety or freedom available to women. We sure as hell don't need to compete for it.
Our liberation is intertwined
Audre Lorde wrote, "I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own." I think about those words all the time. And I have the title of this blog “Ní Saoirse go Saoirse na mBan” on a necklace I wear everyday.
They remind me that liberation cannot be understood purely as an individual achievement. Our freedoms are shaped by the systems we live within, and those systems don't stop operating simply because some of us have managed to secure a more comfortable position. This doesn't mean every feminist must agree on every political question. There should be room for debate about how best to advance rights, justice and equality, but there is a fundamental difference between disagreement over political strategy and deciding that some people's humanity, dignity or freedom are expendable.
We cannot claim to oppose gender-based oppression whilst turning away from it whenever the women experiencing it are inconvenient to our politics and we can’t demand freedom from restrictive gender expectations for ourselves whilst supporting the humiliation or exclusion or genocide of others. As far as I understand it, we cannot seriously challenge patriarchal power without examining the racism, economic exploitation and colonial legacies through which that power is so often exercised.
I don't want a feminism that simply helps more women climb to the top of an unjust system. I want us to build something better. I want a feminism that is curious enough to listen, courageous enough to challenge its own assumptions and committed enough to recognise injustice even when confronting it comes at a personal or political cost.
And I want us, particularly those of us who are white women, to stop treating intersectionality as an optional extra that can be added to our feminism when it's convenient.
To reiterate: our liberation is intertwined, whether we like it or not.
And if we're serious about dismantling patriarchy, we have to be prepared to challenge all the ways it operates, including the ones that benefit us. Solidarity isn't conditional. We don't have to understand every aspect of another woman's life to recognise her humanity and defend her rights. I am pretty sure those of us with any humanity left can fight for ALL OF US.
After all, if our feminism only extends as far as women who look like us, live like us, believe what we believe or have experiences we can personally relate to, how much of the patriarchy are we actually challenging?
That kind of feminism isn’t really feminism at all and it can - frankly - get in the bin.