Feminism is not a space where we all fit. For many of us, it has become too small, and in the suffocation of its limits, some have sought refuge in more situated feminisms, while others have simply left. It has felt violent to us, because in addition to its white origins, it has territorialized itself in a single subject and in a single oppression: the one experienced by white women under sexism.
Any perspective that decentralizes sexism or questions its exclusive subject—the “cis woman”—is seen as a threat, a division, something foreign to feminism, or, at best, a secondary issue. Because in this feminism, the violet lenses are the only tool of analysis, even though those same lenses are incapable of seeing colonial occupation, extractivism, megaprojects, land and territory conflicts, hate crimes, disappearances, and the exploitation of racial capitalism. They only see their privileged subject, ignoring that these women do not exist in a vacuum: they have a color, a class, and often, their position is sustained by the oppression of others.
Not all women are oppressed in the same way, and not all men are oppressors. Let's think of figures like Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris, who, from their positions of power, have supported structures of violence and oppression, such as Zionism and imperialism. Where do they fit in this feminism that only understands oppression in terms of gender, ignoring the broader structures of power?
This is not minor; the demand is radical. I'm talking about how International Women's Day (8M) should not focus on the demands of cis women, but on anti-patriarchal demands. Sometimes we think that all feminism and all women subjects fight against patriarchy as if it were an essential equation. But there are white feminisms, liberal feminisms, state feminisms, and transphobic feminisms that, because they are all of that, are patriarchal feminisms, unlike others. So, an 8M that embraces within its diversity racism, transphobia, and fascism, is less about women's issues but not about de-patriarchalization, or at best, decolonization. These are the feminisms that fight for equal participation and inclusion in all dimensions of the State and society, without questioning the power matrix where they are asking to be included. All of this, while at the same time, there are marginal feminisms that are talking about other women, not necessarily cis or white.
Thus, 8M, as a trademark of a certain white and hegemonic feminism, erases experiences of violence in order to sustain the universality of its subject woman, is a white feminism that builds all women as equals under a single experience, including the female police deployed by the government (because on this day, only female police are on the streets), embraces white Zionists from Polanco as sisters, not considering the genocide in Palestine as a feminist issue, sheltering the white feminist with a glass ceiling, the matron of the family home, and the indigenous domestic worker, in a single narrative and subject which is: cis woman, ceasing to point out the power and violence relations that are reproduced there. Thus, that day becomes the day when debates are ignored and, in the name of unity, the power relations exercised by women in higher scales of privilege are overlooked, where transphobic fascist feminists are embraced, who assault other trans and travesti women, tolerated by the action or silence of cis women who watch assaults from one woman to another, who is read as less human and less intelligible in the cis-sexual matrix of gender. Therefore, this is not ignorance; this fascist diversity is necessary to enable the conversation around 8M to be only about gender and feminism, while erasing other forms of oppression that affect many of us who are not white women or validated as subjects of rights by the clinic and the State.
8M is complicit in the violence it shelters. It has forgotten its working-class surname and has also refused to position itself against racism, transphobia, colonialism, Zionism, the genocide in Palestine, the violence located in bodies displaced and captured by macrocriminality. They prefer not to name an 8M with a political project that responds to fascisms and ultraconservative anti-gender and racist ideologies, because they are part of the patriarchal problem, because most are white feminists, and because they prefer a movement and commemoration where masters and enslaved fit.
There is no anti-patriarchal struggle without anti-colonial struggle, and that implies positioning oneself against the genocide in Palestine, and one cannot speak only of Palestinian women and girls when an entire people is being exterminated. Let’s remember that the sexual assault with sticks by the Israeli army is a documented practice of sexual torture, not only derived from occupation colonialism, but also from colonial patriarchy and Israel as an occupying power.
Embracing an anti-patriarchal struggle is to recognize that, as Yuderkys Espinosa says, “women do not liberate ourselves alone,” you need too much privilege to do it alone. Every liberation is possible in community, because we do not live alone, we are surrounded by other experiences and lives that are not necessarily women and that are part of our survival networks, this includes children and men.
Not all of us have a glass ceiling to break alone in order to get ahead, some of us hold ourselves up from the margins and against all odds. That’s why separatism is white feminism. On 8M, it is necessary that men who renounce the pact of hegemonic masculinity are also present; if we are anti-racist, the peoples, the fathers of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa, and the victims of disappearances or femicides must also be present. To be separatists, one must be white or very privileged.
When a feminist tells me she feels unsafe marching in a mixed contingent with men called from a political project named anti-patriarchal, anti-racist, and anti-fascist, I have to tell her that this is internalized transphobia, because what she is saying is that she feels safer with cis women, among vulvas or with subjects validated with a card of inclusion because they pass the “sexual diversity and trans woman” permissions. It’s the same story as the TERF who denies the use of the bathroom to trans people according to their gender identity, it’s the same ultraconservative panic of believing that masculinity must be demonized because all masculinity is a danger, because they don’t see trans women as women, because masculinity for them is not political and historical, but essential and a body’s destiny. So, it seems that the trans experience is relegated in front of the demands of cisgenderism and the valid subject of 8M, who is always a cis woman. Separatism is not only not strategic at this point, knowing that we are fighting against a matrix of oppression, where we need men, women, children, and every subject to be actively anti-patriarchal, anti-racist, etc., but it is biological essentialism, cisgenderism, and transphobia. It is white feminism, that classical feminism that constructs all women by erasing their race and class as an oppressed group because of their “vulva” by all oppressive men with “dicks.” That’s why travestis and trans people are beaten and persecuted on 8M, and not just that day, because their theoretical foundations are not systemic, but essential and TERF.
This feminism that calls for the 8M march is a cis feminism, and therefore a very violent feminism for many of us. The 8M is about cis women, not about the systemic anti-patriarchal struggle, because it does not understand that patriarchy operates alongside racism, classism, and capital, and that, as a system, it is intertwined with other logics of domination, colonization, and gendering, shaping our bodies—including that of the police who torture and disappear not only cis women but also transvestites, barrio men, and non-white people.
The feminism leading this 8M is a cocktail of TERFs, Zionists, female police officers, and white women who do not question their place in the world. It does so because it continues to insist on the colonial violence of identifying a universal subject—cis women—as the center of the struggle. In other words, feminisms and the 8M are a political mistake.
Living in a world of simultaneous violences and prioritizing gender-based violence over the entire matrix of domination is a privilege of white women. It is a white privilege to march for just one oppression. Who has only one oppression? Many who march do so only against sexism, but the violence they experience is possible because of their racialization and social class. This perspective—of gender, race, and class—is erased by the discursive colonialism (Mohanty) of white feminism.
Ignoring intersectionality and speaking only about gender-based violence in a racist, patriarchal, colonial, hetero-cis-capitalist, and ableist world means that the issues centered in feminism and the 8M are those of white women. These are the issues at the center of the agenda that many are forced to conform to because addressing the full matrix of power would expose how many of these women, despite experiencing sexist violence, also oppress others and are part of the problem—forcing them to examine their political stances and, as Gloria Anzaldúa put it, see the pus of their wounds.
The 8M is shaped by a colonial perspective—the proposal of enlightened white feminism—reaffirming that its only political subject is the (cis) woman. At this point, holding on to this idea exposes the deep coloniality within feminism and, by extension, the 8M. This manifests in practice through the embrace of Zionist women as long as they are "real women," all while centering analysis solely on gender without questioning the hetero-cis-binary framework that naturalizes men and women as biological rather than modern and colonial categories. As long as we continue to ignore coloniality and the hetero-cis-racial matrix of power, we will continue to see Zionist women—who are not only colonialists but also white feminists—as protagonists of the 8M.
This is nothing new—it is a continuation of the feminism that was born white, bourgeois, and racist. At the Second Annual Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, in 1852, while white feminist suffragists resented a Black woman speaking, a white man shouted at Sojourner Truth, "I don’t believe you’re a real woman!"—with the support of white women, as the audience, including them, yelled for her to be silenced. Sojourner Truth was one of many who, in attempting to be human, included, and respected as a Black woman, had to prove that she was a woman. Because white feminism has always been an ally of patriarchy, which naturalizes gender binarism. The category of "woman" has always been reserved for white women.
That is why today, within feminist debates and the 8M, anyone who tries to displace this narrow, cis subject to make space for others is met with violence. They use the separatist argument that "feminism is not the mother of all struggles and that the natural political subject is the woman"—referring exclusively to the cis, white woman.
White feminism has always been a gender police and a jailer of the social doctrine of the Church. Sojourner Truth, like many of us today, was forced to expose her breasts to "prove" she was a woman. Because womanhood is a category with racist origins. That is why I stopped insisting and abandoned feminism—because the struggles upheld by the 8M insist on the singularity of their universal female subject. That is why they can so easily say that we should be excluded, silenced, or tolerate being beaten in their ranks.
Isn’t the trans-travesti body the first to be scrutinized by cisness, which demands proof of what we claim to be? Sojourner Truth had to unconsciously validate her body through the colonial, biologicist knowledge that defined the attributes of white women—the only ones recognized as "real women"—to publicly confirm that she had an anatomy similar to theirs, and therefore, she was a woman. Truth’s urgency to be seen as a woman was her urgency to be seen as human. If she could prove her womanhood, she could prove she was not a slave. It has always been a matter of race, not gender—genealogies that the feminism of the 8M ignores because it has no interest in questioning its place in the matrix of power.
Although today it may be frowned upon to expel Black women as they do with trans and travesti people, they did so in the past—because they have always fought to maintain their power, to be equal to white men. They do not seek to abolish differences but to achieve parity in power. That is why they will continue to focus only on sexism, never racism, classism, or colonialism—because doing so would expose their role as caretakers of their race, just as supremacist as the masters.
That is why they whisper, “Don’t let her speak,” while the man who reaffirms their womanhood shouts that we "don’t look like women." Today, those are the feminicide perpetrators of trans and travesti women—the same ones who, in the past, lynched to protect white femininity under the myth of the Black man as a rapist.
Separatism is not justified by the claim that women are the political subject of feminism because, from its origins, that subject has been the white woman, and today it remains the cis woman. Many have had to fight to include other women who have been denied recognition, such as trans and travesti women, because white feminism continues to naturalize the binary gender difference and reproduce the heterosexual regime. That’s why Monique Wittig said that lesbians were not women—because her analysis did not defend a singular "woman" subject but rather subjects in terms of social and gender practices.
Patriarchy is fused within the matrix of domination (Hills Collins), meaning that any theory or political movement must be articulated to provide multiple responses from multiple subjects to problems that go beyond just a body and an identity. If we talk about a subject, it should be plural. And if "the ama" (the mistress, the dominant subject) does not want to shift her interests to prioritize collectives, then perhaps, for many like me, feminism is already over. That does not mean I am not anti-patriarchal—because, unlike white feminism, which sees itself as fractured, I experience patriarchal violence as an effect of colonial wounds.
This 8M, as always, I feel like an insufficient body for the movement. It's a day that feels violent for many because it is made for cis and white women by birth. This year, I tried to be part of a space with valuable people, but I couldn't. Many are convinced that the subject of 8M is "women," approaching power analysis in a fragmented way, failing to see the necessity of embracing a non-separatist, multiple movement—one not essentialized around the identity of the (cis) woman.
There is an openly transphobic, white, separatist, biologicist, colonial, and exclusionary feminism whose subject is verified through gender policing—checking what’s between people’s legs. What remains hidden is that 8M has been so captured and territorialized by the Eurocentric feminist rationale (Yuderkys Espinosa) that even when it claims to be trans-inclusive, anti-racist, decolonial, or pro-Palestine, it remains "womanist" and keeps the oppression of women centered on gender, turning these commitments into accessories. Consciously or unconsciously, this makes them separatist.
They claim to be anti-racist, but Black anti-patriarchal men are not allowed. They claim to be pro-Palestine, but Palestinian anti-patriarchal men are not welcomed. The intersection has a limit, and that limit is the woman subject. This is a serious political mistake. That is why feminism ends up fracturing movements and coalitions that are deeply interconnected in their analysis and struggle against the matrix of power. Even when it embraces the label "intersectional," it does so with limits—still holding onto the core of white feminism: oppressed women and oppressor men. It is easier for them to embrace a wealthy white woman than an impoverished Black man. And what else can be said, other than that this feminism is violent?
Separatism is only safe for white women. Only safe for cis women.
As hard as it may be, we must accept that the struggle is interconnected because the conservative right is also interconnected. Politicians, billionaire businessmen, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and fundamentalists of the church—even lesbians like Alice Weidel, leader of the far-right party Alternative for Germany—know how to unite when it comes to preserving the coloniality of the world.
Gender-based separatism is a privilege of white feminists because it conceals their race and class. I will continue to insist that white people must be actively anti-racist, standing as abolitionist Angelica Grinke once did when she said, "Identify me with Black people," as an ethical stance against the institution of slavery. Any form of separatism is a political mistake, and the 8M is built upon it, because only through separatism can it uphold cisgenderism and sexism at its core. The false link between the mistress in the mansion and the enslaved woman in the cabin ignores other forms of domination intersecting with the white hetero-CIS-patriarchy that governs the modern world.
It is crucial to ask whether feminist separatism is truly useful as a strategy in any movement or theory—and who benefits from it. My answer is no, it is not. To fight systems of oppression, the struggle must be de-essentialized. While it is true that our personal experiences shape our commitments, history has shown that collaboration, collective indignation, and solidarity among marginalized groups or those critical of power relations are necessary to take an active and non-neutral stance against violence. Staying on the sidelines in the face of genocide, racism, sexism, or any other form of aggression is being part of the problem, and it is always convenient for the power structure.
It is essential to recognize that femicide, transphobia, racism, ableism, etc., are not just issues for those who suffer them but problems for all of society. Slavery was never just an issue between the master and the enslaved—it was a societal issue. The epidemic of crimes against sexual dissidents and women is not just a problem for women and queers—it is a problem of a society that has normalized and accepted such lethal violence. The idea that each group must focus solely on its oppression is part of the power matrix’s strategy to keep us isolated and even pitted against each other.
This is why we see TERFs attacking trans women as a victory for the hetero-cis-capitalist patriarchy—it spares the state and its colonial ideological apparatus the effort of repression.
The fragmented way in which struggles are approached—all inscribed in capitalism, in processes of exploitation and looting of the Third World, in hetero-cis-patriarchal, racist, colonial, and ableist dynamics—by separating each group with its subject constructed as a universal category is a political mistake due to its essentialist nature. But more importantly, it is an analytical mistake because no one is affected by just one axis of oppression.
Women are never just women, which is why not all women are the same, and many can oppress others. Trans and travesti people do not only experience transphobia—they have race, class, and disability. Think of the working class, the exploited, fat people, children. Think of Palestinians, Haitians, migrants. It is a political mistake to see women as a homogeneous group with a single shared experience of oppression at the hands of men. The reality is that, for many of us, our greatest oppressors have not just been men but also women.
This does not mean that all women are “bad,” but rather that in patriarchy—which does not operate in isolation—not all women are victims, as their roles and positions within other systems of oppression vary. Our struggle is against all forms of power and their relations—not against individuals, unless we are talking about Trump or Milei, who embody power itself. Those two should visit hell soon.
It is necessary to question the agenda of feminism that is framed only in terms of gender and leaves many behind. Perhaps we should write another—an anti-patriarchal one framed in anti-colonial, anti-hetero-cis-patriarchal, and anti-capitalist terms, one situated at the margins, so we can clearly see that it is better to march alongside a Palestinian than with a Hillary Clinton.
Because our bodies alone will not save us. Being surrounded by vulvas does not translate into a safe space for everyone.
I wonder, how safe is the racialized domestic worker marching alongside her employer?
We need uncomfortable questions that challenge the essentialism within our movements and lead us to genuine solidarity against patriarchy, not separatism among the oppressed while confronting the oppressors, who can be both men and women.
Patriarchy also materializes in white women, white gays, and white Zionist lesbians, who, even in the face of undeniable genocide, choose to side with the master.
Let’s not forget: on the plantation, there were not only masters but also mistresses.
Anti-racism does not stop at the oppressor—it confronts them.
Today, we should ask ourselves: Who are the mistresses of our time?
A March 8 that does not place Palestine at the center is white feminism.
Without the liberation of all peoples, there is no freedom for women.
We must not only speak instrumentally for the freedom of Palestinian women, but for the anti-colonial liberation of all peoples.
Until Haiti, Congo, Sudan, and Palestine— as peoples, men, women, and children —are free, neither will we be.
So I will say only this: where that feminism dissolves, our struggle burns. MIRA AHORA SI
