A photo of a fist holding the female symbol.
A fist holding the female symbol. Credit: Kayla Sawyer / Flickr Credit: Kayla Sawyer / Flickr

Only a few years ago, we saw the massive march of women with an estimated 3 to 5.5 million people protesting Trump’s misogyny across the U.S. When the Roe V Wade draft decision was leaked, which would strike down the most important single judicial decision in recent American history for women, the numbers were only in the thousands. What has happened in those five years? In early June, two prominent feminist writers, Michelle Goldberg and Susan Faludi, wrote in the New York Times of the current backlash against feminism in the United States.

The three prominent signs of that backlash are the Roe V Wade decision, the overwhelming social media attacks against Amber Heard for accusing Johnny Depp of domestic abuse and a recent poll reporting that many young people on both sides of the political divide think that feminism has done more harm than good.

Perhaps most disturbing for the future of feminism is a poll by the Southern Poverty Law Centre of 1,500 people. While the poll was focussed on the considerable public support for the racist White Replacement Theory, it also asked whether feminism has done more harm than good. No-one was surprised that Republicans of all ages agreed with the statement but 46 per cent of Democratic men and nearly a quarter of Democratic women under 50 also agreed.

Goldberg says that it might just be that feminism has been so mainstream in the last twenty years, from Beyonce performing in front of a giant feminism sign to Paris fashion models holding up feminist placards at the end of runway, it makes sense that young people would rebel against it. Faludi thinks that the Women’s March group were seduced by celebrity feminism during the #metoo movement and torn apart by vicious internal divisions.

Petra Kassun-Mutch, the publisher of the excellent Canadian feminist online magazine Liisbeth writes that she can see Michelle Golderg’s point of view “But only if I use a pair of American opera glasses and focus on an American feminist stage (Note: I sincerely grieve for our American sisters)”

In some ways, we can feel sanguine in Canada. After 50 years of organizing, we finally won a national childcare program with active participation of childcare advocacy organizations across the country. All but one of the Conservative leadership candidates claims that they are pro-choice on abortion. Prime Minister Trudeau calls himself a feminist and Christia Freeland actually is a feminist and likely the next Liberal leader.

I am working with a group of women entrepreneur organizations who for the first time in feminist history are increasingly joining the fight for equality and social justice. New groups like Coralus (formerly SheEO) that offers interest free loans to women entrepreneurs, Fifth Wave, which supports women-led start-ups in digital media, and the unique Canadian Women’s Chamber of Commerce, which is trying to create a progressive alternative to the Chamber of Commerce, are creating new forms of organizing.

Senator Donna Dasko recently published a piece Feminism is on the Rise in Canada quoting a recent poll that 57 per cent of women and 70 per cent of women 18-24 consider themselves feminist. But looking at history, we should be cautious.

There was a backlash all through the 1980’s in the U.S. but in Canada, the women’s movement won pay equity, employment equity, constitutional equality and most dramatically legal abortion during that period. In the same year as Faludi’s Backlash was published. I, a well-known radical who helped lead the abortion victory, was elected President of Canada’s largest women’s group, the National Action Committee on the Status of Women to face off against a Conservative government who we worried were intent on driving back those gains.

During my three-year term, we managed to win some battles and get a lot of attention. In 1993, Sunera Thobani, a woman of colour who was elected NAC President led the largest women’s march in Canadian history against women’s poverty and the Féderation des Femmes du Québec organized a mass march from Montreal to Quebec City for women’s equality that had tremendous public support. Then came the backlash, which was combined with racism and neo-liberalism and the destruction of NAC about fifteen years after the backlash in the U.S. Now we have social media and it happens a lot of faster. Note the so-called Freedom Convey and the latest poll on belief in right-wing conspiracy theories in Canada.

I worry that the generation who are just coming into their teens are more likely to reject feminism. Last month I spoke to my great niece’s Grade 8 class.  She was worried I would only talk about “white feminists” and embarrass her in front of her friends. I was interviewed by a radical feminist podcaster who told me a lot of her friends think that second wave feminism was a bunch of white lesbians, who excluded others, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Young people are very involved in exploring gender and see feminism perhaps as something that holds them back from that.

It’s also true as Petra points out that feminism isn’t dying, it’s morphing into what is needed for today.

She writes “Feminism lives, breathes and thrives mostly underground creating the conditions for deep change. Branches of it need to die so that others can grow.”

She points out that “representative and girl boss feminism” is not useful in a world of multiple crises. That what we need is “solidarity feminism,” what we used to call socialist feminism, that understands the connection among all of the social justice, economic and climate issues.

Is what Goldberg and Faludi describe the decline of feminism or its transformation? While the mainstream labor movement in the US is in decline, the brilliant grassroots organizing efforts at Amazon, Whole Foods, and Starbucks are re-creating a working-class resistance as was clear in the recent meeting of Labor Notes.  Do yourself a favour and watch one or more of the videos from the conference. You will note the warmth and care with which these organizers raise differences. It gives me hope.

The activists in the reproductive justice movement are focussing on making sure racialized and poor women can get access to abortion when the actual decision on Roe V Wade comes down and abortion is banned in numerous states. Maybe that makes more sense than organizing big protests that the Supremes will simply ignore. Hopefully now that the Court has actually struck down Roe V Wade, they will turn their attention to mobilize such a force that the President and Congress to take action.

But some of the issues raised by Goldberg and Faludi are problems in the US and Canada as well. Reproductive justice activist Loretta J. Ross asks “what if instead of calling people out, we call them in?” And it’s not just us old folks, writer and pleasure activist adrienne maree brown makes many of the same arguments.

Whether it’s social media, racism, trans exclusive feminism, or dogma, we seem to have more and more difficulty working together when we don’t agree. I’ve been involved in a lot of successful struggles and in all of them we were required to make alliances with people we disagreed with on other issues and to have debates among ourselves to figure out the way forward. In the current historical moment with the rise of the alt-right and fascism, we have never needed unity in action more.

Social media was dominant before COVID, and has become our only means of communication during COVID, which makes it much worse. When I radicalized in the 1960’s, personal connection with other people was central to being able to identify why I felt so different from other girls and how the world needed to change. I know we can make friends on social media, indeed I have. But face-to-face communication is essential to feel our connection and learn from each other not only through our words but through our actions and feelings.

Taking a mainstream lens, we would have to declare that feminism has never been stronger in Canada and around the world. Abortion was legalized in Chile after massive mobilization, a Black woman and grassroots activist was just elected Vice-President of Columbia, and there is a movement in England supported by the House of Commons to accommodate women with menopause symptoms at work.

It’s not just the feminist movement that is weak, it is the entire Left. There’s no space to discuss that here but a discussion on the future of feminism in the U.S. might help us to figure out how to turn around the current decline of influence of grassroots movements that are in my view the first line of offense for every political issue.

Judy Rebick

Judy Rebick

Judy Rebick is one of Canada’s best-known feminists. She was the founding publisher of rabble.ca , wrote our advice column auntie.com and was co-host of one of our first podcasts called Reel Women....