The world I once knew has completely changed in the past few years. Like many other feminists in and from the West Asia and North Africa region, my reality has been almost the opposite of my counterparts in the West.
Movements I’ve worked with and been a part of, were targeted by state and ultra-nationalist political agents, leaving the grassroots out of the spaces left for any type of organizing and allowing those well-established and socially connected to states to remain operational.
Since COVID-19 and after it, International feminism has continued its business as usual, leaving most of us behind. Authoritarianism does that; it closes the space and suffocates the powerful core of movements, leaving a margin of space easily hijacked by organisations that have historically compromised on class and sexuality issues or those who connect better to the apolitical international movements.
In the past few years, my reality seemed like a barrier to connection instead of an opportunity for dialogue; movements I try to open space for were seen as uninfluential and unimportant because, in the past few years, they have not had space to engage with internationalism as much as they should.
With Donald Trump elected, a more harmonious world order seems to merge these differing realities. Feminists have an opportunity to imagine new ways of resistance and organizing that speak to our historically marginalized movements, frequently co-opted by political agendas. There is also an opportunity to switch perspectives from internationalism to globalism and to accept and partner with what has been resisted so far. Octavia Butler says that we must partner in what is unavoidable: power sharing and accountability can’t be avoided, and resisting them is not sustainable.
This text invites everyone, especially those in the global south and east, to reflect on the vast geographical, political, classist, and structural gap among feminists in international conversations.
Unserviceable internationality
#MeToo connected narratives globally—from India to Egypt to the USA. It allowed feminist relatability for millions, broke the isolation surrounding feminist narratives locally, and brought many movements together in an unprecedented moment.
However, from this peak of unity, the silence of international feminism severed this connection line since Gaza, the #MeToo connection became #YouOnly. Feminists in the WANA region found themselves isolated, screaming into a void on social media, with a looming sense of betrayal on multiple levels.
Fear of punitive precedents in philanthropy seeped into every conversation, fear of being defunded became pervasive, and the emergence of this as a crisis was accelerated to a fully-fledged one. Funding for feminist movements was already on the decline, fear trickled down top-down, and the agenda shifted. The conversation around defunding was used to avoid any deep and real discussion about the impact of this silence and reactivity on the ecosystem. Organizations that were defunded, dropped from strategic conversations. Those who had any connection to Palestine were expected to disappear because it looked like they no longer offered the desired diversity.
Instead of pushing back against political repression and collectively organizing to maintain the resourcing of feminist movements without compromising anyone, the focus shifted to “control” Palestine organizing and Palestinian voices. My LinkedIn is full of loud whispers from Palestinians and organizers for Palestine being treated like a liability. In horrible instances, the war in Sudan and defunding were weaponized against any attempt to open a conversation; names of representatives from WANA that have no connection to movements were thrown into any conversation as a weapon as well. WANA feminists are forced to fight each other to be in a conversation. Palestine became a liability. Conversations were shut down, and big words, like “decolonize this and that,” slowly faded away.
International feminist spaces and conversations faltered, while in WANA, feminist movements were left to confront four unfathomable tragedies: genocide in Gaza, war in Sudan, war in Lebanon, and being forsaken to maintain funding. WANA movements that have been organizing in innovative structures that connected Palestine to their queer, black, migrant, and feminist organizing were disregarded as a source of knowledge; they are stigmatized as troublemakers, unable to be strategic; and being strategic here means not bringing any discomfort, and keeping business as usual.
In a way, these International feminist spaces allow Palestine to exist only if this existence is victimized. Ironically, Palestinians in feminist international spaces needed to be made simple, while feminist movements around the world needed to understand the complexity of the lack of solidarity from international women’s organizations and human rights organizations.
All of this is happening, while our WANA movements were already undergoing significant shifts. We were struggling with more profound questions of accountability and witnessing a generational transition as younger queers and feminists are emerging as leaders from this region, and have pushed the boundaries of politics that my generation for example hadn’t fully defined. They imagined better structures of organizing.
These movements have pushed and increased the boundaries of our spaces, which made the collective organizing space bigger and therefore more inclusive. While my generation asserted a queer feminist narrative, those organizing in the past few years have succeeded in its praxis. In Lebanon, Palestine, Sudan, and Syria, feminist movements were left alone at a moment when connections were needed.
Internationality has proved useless to WANA feminist movements in recent years because it is hierarchical by nature, whereas movements’ innate form and structure lie in horizontality and circulatory leadership.
International feminism proved that it can only be helpful if global south realities can relate to whatever happens in the global north, but this reciprocity is rarely applicable.
If Trump wins, we must all be afraid. If there is a genocide in Gaza, it only concerns us.
With Trump’s election, there’s a narrative suggesting that women, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and non-binary people everywhere are in danger. This assumes that Trump and what he represents unite us all. While this assumption holds some truth, it also implies that when rights in the West are threatened, the danger is of greater significance.
Just before the election, a passing piece of news reported that 30 Sudanese women had taken their own lives to avoid rape. Just before the election, Palestinian men were raped on video by Israeli soldiers. This list could go on. It’s difficult for WANA movements to fully relate to any international fight against Trump’s representation now with a sense of urgency and rage. In reality, these were the issues we have been fighting against, and for a long time we were told they are bound by geography.
It is and will remain challenging to enter international spaces and compromise on our experiences and battles. International feminism is ending, like all frameworks that are conditional, and we need to move toward a global feminism, one that is better equipped to navigate this moment with a wealth of tools and imagination.
Global feminism: shifting gears
I’ve been following networks and organizations from Sri Lanka, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa. I’m humbled every day by Georgian feminists fighting the abduction of their state and the criminalization of their work, while visibly standing in solidarity with Palestine, Congo, and Lebanon. I’ve engaged in conversations where these realities coexist without tension or frustration.
Sudan and Palestine exist as grave and urgent struggles needing support, without creating a hierarchy of solidarity, because contexts are understood as circular and entangled. All causes and struggles become central in this way, because we stand in different positions. Assuming we all have the same positionality is repressive, and shrinks the infinite possibilities of solidarity, and creates a hierarchy of causes.
A global feminism framing makes it possible for no one to be asked to compromise on what is vital—everything can exist side by side because that is the reality of our global south. Here lies an opportunity to learn and shift gears; global feminism offers a way forward together, where no one is left behind. For this gear to move, power must be shared; for power to be shared, we must hold ourselves accountable to the decisions and realities we have created. Global south feminists must not just be at the table, they have also to co-steer the direction of the conversation.
Global feminism allows us to reimagine the Trump shadow over our world, grounded in our local and regional movements, without compromising our politics. It enables earnest conversations on the funding crisis, liberating organizations from survival tactics that isolate them in fear of losing resources. Movements in WANA have been less and less interested in “NGOS,” as a working model. Professionalism and NGOzations of our movements are being discussed, at least in WANA movements as challenges; global feminism allows these conversations to happen because they look at the movement ecosystem beyond partnerships between two or more NGOs. International feminism is a professional one, and naturally, it will build all conversations around funding and existing; nothing exists, beyond the program and the project.
Global feminism encourages a more significant, inclusive conversation that fosters an ecosystem response and, most importantly, allows movements to use their collective imagination. Surviving a crisis means considering what you must find on the other side. What is the point if feminist organizations survive this crisis alone?
Self-awareness as a way toward accountability and solidarity
This is a truly horrific moment. It will be remembered as one of the ugliest times in our history, a moment of profound transition and destruction for what people and movements have built. A monster of greed and hate is on the loose, sparing no one. Our world is witnessing a struggle to reinstate a hierarchy of whose lives are valued more.
We must reject this hierarchy at all costs. For this rejection to happen, we must act with self-awareness. Where do we stand? What is our power over others? What space have we existed in, and with whom did we share it? We must also stop treating accountability and mistake it with cancellation; for this to happen, this insistence on the language of toxic positivity needs to be revisited. For self-care, healing, and resistance to take place; it must acknowledge the pains and wounds and name them. We need to recognize the state of the world that exists outside our own reality, especially for those of us in the West.
Self-awareness is essential for moving toward a global feminism that allows hard conversations, names, and heals betrayals, embraces anger, and shares power inclusively and honestly. This grim future didn’t begin with Trump’s election, and it wouldn’t have disappeared with his loss.
In international spaces, we often speak of feminist solidarity, though our actions fall short. We usually discuss those who aren’t in the room or lack a seat at the table. But we overlook that sometimes the discussion isn’t happening at the table at all, that we think if money is on the table, the conversation is undoubtedly there. I’m humbled by how Sudanese feminists have responded to save their people. I believe the conversation is there. I see feminists, queers, migrants, and refugees organizing together in Lebanon, wholly unrecognized by the table, and for me, the conversation is there.
We need some self-awareness. We need to know if we are approaching political tension with “professional solutions”. Are we holding ourselves accountable to the political decisions we are making now to those who will be impacted by them in the future? At this time, there isn’t time to sit at a table and assess who’s missing. It is time to reckon that there are many tables, and our feminist table needs not to be in the way.
