Where Have All the Feminists Gone?

Words by Dehara Weeraman

Graphics by Amelie Lamberti

Gender-based-violence has been the norm for women of all walks of life since the beginning of time. “One in three” is a statistic that lives at the forefront of our minds. We’re told to wear one headphone when walking home from the train station, stay aware of our surroundings at all times; we’re taught to be polite, timid, to always smile and cross our legs. But how can we continue this farce when our rights are being ripped from our hands? How can we keep smiling when the world sees us as “things” instead of people?

Sampat Pal Devi’s story is a legend to feminists around the world. Bundelkhand, also known as Uttar Pradesh, is home to some of the most impoverished people in India with an estimated over thirty percent of its population living well below the poverty line. In a village with a deep-rooted patriarchal culture riddled with caste divisions, gender-based violence, and female illiteracy, Sampat Pal Devi, a bright-eyed child, taught herself how to read and write. At the age of twelve, Devi became a wife to a local ice cream vendor and eight years later, a mother to five children. 

At 16, Sampat Pal Devi, fed up with the persistent violence towards herself and her female neighbors, decided she needed to take action against the community's abusive husbands, fathers, brothers, and politicians. In 2006, she decided it was time to challenge the patriarchy and revolutionize her village. This perpetual mistreatment sparked the formation of an untraditional female vigilante group, the Gulabi gang. Sampat Pal Devi didn’t form the group merely to retaliate against these men; she taught women self defense, empowered them to stand up for themselves and their rights, aided in the elder women’s attempts to claim their pensions, and educated the female population in reading and writing. The Gulabi Gang is still active and ever-growing, inspiring others around the world never to settle for anything less than what is deserved.

In 2016, the murder of a young woman shook the nation of South Korea, calling into question how the government would be protecting women from senseless violence. The assailant of the Gangnam Station murder case, Seongmin Kim, decided to hide out in a public restroom within South Korea’s entertainment district. CCTV footage showed that Kim allowed a safe exit for six different men that used the restroom. After waiting for over an hour, Kim encountered the victim, a young woman identified as Ha, as she entered the restroom, stabbing her several times and leaving her dead body in the bathroom to be discovered by her friend. 

After initially denying his involvement in the crime, Kim later admitted he felt compelled to kill her due to schizophrenia-induced delusions of being harassed by women. The court found the crime to be a crime of insanity, sentencing him to thirty-years in prison, medical treatment, and an ankle bracelet. At the end of one of his many appeal trials, Seongmin Kim noticeably lacked signs of remorse or guilt, oftentimes laughing even. 

This case sparked a potent influx of gender-based conflict in South Korea, and the birth of several feminist movements, including the 4B Movement. The 4B Movement sparked international discourse over their four no’s:- Biyeonae- no dating, Bihon- marrying, Bisekseu- having sex with, or Bichulsan- producing children with men. The 4B movement became so powerful that the birthrate in South Korea dropped drastically, solidifying South Korea as having one of the lowest birthrates in the world. The women of South Korea united as a collective to deliver a message to the men of the nation: women are more than just baby-makers and caretakers; we are autonomous individuals deserving of economic and social freedom. 

Assata Olugbala Shakur, a radical black feminist and prominent member of both the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army, helped pave the way for the grassroots activism and movements we know today. Shakur studied oppression seen around the world and identified a common thread: the fight for socialism and autonomy. Through the BLA’s use of grassroots activism, Assata learned the value of a bottom-up collective to advance political consciousness and secure autonomy through mass-based community power. In today’s world of activism, grassroots structuring has become a typical occurrence. We see groups like the Palestinian Youth Movement, NYC ICE Watch, #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, etc. lean on community participation to enact political change.

Born Joanne Deborah Chesimard, Shakur changed her name to not only reject her western name, but to feel fully connected to her African identity. Assata, meaning she who struggles, Olugbala, meaning love for the people, Shakur, meaning the thankful one. To this day, Shakur is still listed as one of FBI’s most wanted terrorists with a one million dollar reward following her escape to Cuba from New Jersey, where she was imprisoned for first degree murder of a police officer and domestic terrorism. Shakur was a force to be reckoned with; she was willing to do whatever it took for the complete liberation of all oppressed groups. She was a trailblazer and a champion in a plethora of movements from anti-war to student rights, from flag-bearing at the forefront of the fight for black rights to the feminist movement.

You may ask, how are we supposed to bring back real feminism when the feminist movement is alive and well? Western modern feminism stems from viewing inequality through the lens of white, heterosexual, and affluent women. Today’s feminists know the names Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but forget Marsha P Johnson, the woman that jumpstarted Stonewall and shaped the LGBTQ+ movement for decades to come, and Sojourner Truth, the feminist abolitionist. Even the iconic Audre Lorde is too often left off of “top ten most influential feminists” lists. The former and latter are all rightfully esteemed and ingrained in our minds as feminist activists. But why is it that the masses are forgetting our black and brown sisters that paved the way for today’s version of feminism? 

People all over the world are actively teaching themselves to decenter men and to become empowered by everything it means to be a woman: freeing the nip, growing out body hair, reclaiming sexual desires. But, our governments still do not see us as equals, as people deserving of inclusivity and equal treatment. We still receive less pay, are expected to take on more responsibility, told we’re too emotional, called “sluts” and “bitches” by prominent men in power. When we’re too loud about our mistreatment we’re called man-hating chauvinistic feminazis; too quiet and we’re man-loving, self-hating, male-gaze-obsessed fake feminists. We’re forgetting what we’re really fighting for: our rights and the rights of all women that will come after us. 

Embracing feminism in its whole, not solely western feminism rooted in racism and classism, alleviates the issues of infighting and severance while shifting our focus to the fighting for our basic human rights. Feminism, at its core, is an ever-evolving movement focused on dismantling systems of oppression. Let these powerful unsung women be an inspiration to the forthcoming revolution western society desperately yearns for. We owe it to ourselves, and to the women before and after us, to educate ourselves on feminism, to educate ourselves on everything we’ve taken for granted and everything we’ve been too lenient about.

“No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help set you free.”

- Assata Shakur

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About the Author

Equipped with a B.A. in political science, Dehara Weeraman is an avid feminist and human rights activist with a passion for writing. She loves to read books of all genres, from memoirs and literary nonfiction to science and prose fiction. Outside of work, she spends her time in Brooklyn baking bread, knitting, and frequenting jazz bars with friends.