Morgan Moone
Our #GlobalFeminist series began by questioning whether the modern women’s movement, manifesting itself in the United States as the Women’s March and Women’s Wave movement, was a true mechanism for a global, intersectional change. Our argument was that, due to the failure of white, Western, able-bodied and cis-gender women to understand the history of women’s movement; structural injustices and racism; and the resulting feminism trend that favored profits over radical change, the modern women’s movement succumbed to trendier topics of female empowerment. As a result, prison abolition, climate justice, indigenous rights, labor rights, trans rights and other social issues were not amplified and the experiences of activists and communities were excluded.
There is a growing demand and necessity to reframe our struggles in the broader, macro level framework of human rights. Feminist goals are embedded in the conception of human rights, even though we have not been able to achieve women’s rights in practice. It has been proven that women are incredible leaders. A New York Times article, commenting on the questioned ability of women to lead a sustainable movement, said: “Women led the resistance, and everyone followed.”
The Women’s March hosted its third march on January 19, 2019, with a record low attendance to date. Many women attended in spite of their social or political concerns; many women boycotted; some attended one of two competing marches in the same city; some women didn’t have a choice as their city-specific marches were cancelled by organizers. Regardless, the divide and long standing disappointment with the Women’s March reaffirms the need for a global, intersectional feminist movement.
The women’s movement has largely focused on issues that impact Western white women and assumes that all women are equal beneficiaries of progress
We must demand accountability and radical restructuring of how women, femmes and gender non-conforming individuals move in a world dominated by patriarchy and, not just inequality, but active disenfranchisement. Western women must decenter themselves from movements that perpetuate war, neocolonialism and capitalism. White women must no longer be okay with society coming back for black women and women of color after white women attain their rights. (“As black men and all women agitated for the right to vote, a political battle broke out over who would be enfranchised first…Either way, black women would be last.”) Cis-gender, heteronormative women must understand that the right to bodily autonomy and reproductive justice is not one size fit all. Women fighting to protect women from domestic violence must understand the carceral feminism hiding behind factions of the #MeToo movement and VAWA policies.
“Leadership needs to have a deeper understanding and embody what it means to fully commit yourself to liberation; for both ourselves and each other.”
In addition to addressing the easily digestible vacancies in the current women’s movement, we must also address the role that capitalism, corporations and neoliberal policies have on our consumption and dissemination of feminism. The corporatization of feminism has taken the women’s movement and resold it as a product bought, enjoyed and achieved by a single individual. It has removed the collective movement and activism from feminism and watered it down to a trinket that one can buy online. It is no longer what you stand for but what you wear, as seen in breast cancer activism where corporatization and commodification has created a multibillion dollar profit machine. And, the same forces that seek to commodify feminism are the ones that place thousands upon thousands of women at risk from extractive industries and capitalistic enterprises. Women across the globe fight against the economic and political extractivism model that prioritizes profit over human rights. Privatization of critical public services such as education, access to water, healthcare and housing increases inequalities and adds to obstacles that women and girls face in attaining true women’s rights.
We’ve said it before: the only way we can hold human rights to its ideals is through a global, inclusive unapologetic feminist movement. Farah Tanis, co-founder and Executive Director of Black Women’s Blueprint, says: “People need to have more vision. Leadership,” she says, “needs to have a deeper understanding and embody what it means to fully commit yourself to liberation; for both ourselves and each other.” Raquel Willis, a transgender activist and lawyer, told Newsweek “We must go beyond having trans women speak and share their brilliance for a one-off event. We have to go beyond saying that transwomen are included, we have to show it by putting them in leadership positions and building pipelines to leadership.”
Privatization of critical public services such as education, access to water, healthcare and housing increases inequalities and adds to obstacles that women and girls face in attaining true women’s rights.
To fight for ourselves and each other is, historically and even to this day, a radical notion that causes fractitious division in the women’s movement. Many feel that their voices are not being heard. Many feel that, at a critical time to show unity and strength, only the feminist issues linked to securing a constituent’s vote (ex.: equal pay, birth control, maternity leave) were brought to light as a way to increase attendance and voter turnout for the most recent Congressional and Presidential elections. Natasha Johnson, founder of Globalizing Gender, says “We’ve siloed, we’ve stepped over and around each other and we don’t give each other space to admit when we’ve messed up. So instead of accepting each other, we see each other as enemy, while the structures we protest fortify. We have collective consciousness, diverse techniques and detailed experiences that can aide one another in ways that we can’t even imagine because we’ve never seen it done like that before, except at center.”
“We must go beyond having trans women speak and share their brilliance for a one-off event. We have to go beyond saying that transwomen are included, we have to show it by putting them in leadership positions and building pipelines to leadership.”
The dismantling of patriarchy does not come just from demanding equal rights for women. It comes from understanding and demanding a radical and revolutionary restructuring of the system that incarcerates more individuals than anywhere else in the world; it demands access to clean water and air in all zip codes; it requires a reckoning of the inherent distrust and disbelief of women which results in the highest maternal mortality rates in the developed world; it demands undoing colonial and capitalist outsourcing through continued hegemonic entitlement; it demands racial justice.
Despite shortcomings, there is now a focus on feminist movements, and it is an opportunity for us to envision something bolder and broader.
