The State of Feminism

Last night, my husband and I were having this conversation with our nephew and he said, "The thing is, women have won and the world is terrified," because the world expects that we will do with the world what has been done to us for millennia. I think actually that experience of that kind of existential threat is what we are witnessing now. That fear of having lost empire, the fear of having lost dominion, the fear of having lost power is a very real one. And I think that the experience of anti-colonial movements is the same experience that feminist movements have always known on some intrinsic level, which is [change] comes from really extraordinary levels of fight and struggle and overcoming. And, yes, actually you do give up power because what you give up is absolute power. I think that that is something that we have to be willing to own and to say, "Actually nobody needs that much money and nobody needs that much power. And there's plenty of all of it to go around."

So I think for me, the power of us being able to also step outside of the United States as a frame, it's inadequate after two years of a genocide, after extraordinary levels of us watching the whole world kind of converse under a pretended commitment to one set of values, while we're happily destroying those values as we speak, is a reminder to us that the word feminism itself is at risk of being so twisted. I was living in Germany when a feminist foreign minister literally said, "It is okay to target women and children if they're being used as human shields." If you do that in the name of feminism, then for women and children all over the world, the identification of feminism as something that is done in the name of imperialism, in the name of colonialism, in the name of oppression, becomes something very real.

For me, owning the power that we have actually arrived at a place, and then working from the space of understanding that all revolutions, when you win, you have to both be honest to your own values, and there will be many threats from within. And to understand that counter-revolutionaries are just waiting to pounce. So this is our moment. We've just won the revolution, and the counter-revolutionaries are fighting really hard, and we have to be smarter and stronger and more together than we ever were until now. And I have a lot of faith because I think the world is coming together. I think feminists of all genders — and for me, I don't actually make it about women — feminism has nothing to do with what's between our legs and everything to do with what's between our ears. And I am so excited to have more people join us in that movement. I'm excited for the future. I think we have a chance.

The quote [we are linked not ranked] made me think of the African American spiritual, "May the circle be unbroken, by and by Lord, by and by." There's something just beautiful about bringing back the circle. It's so strange — we live on a round planet and we don't think about circles. We always want to be first in this and first in that, and not being ranked is profoundly important. If countries were not competing to be number one, what if we could say, "What is important for us together?"

These remarks have been edited for clarity and length.