Feminist Coalitions Research Articles

Unpredictable digital intimacies and virtual backstabbing: the feminist coalition’s political effect in Nigeria

Abstract This article explores digital intimacies within Nigeria’s networked political discourse, focusing on the resurgence of the Feminist Coalition (FemCo), known for their involvement in Nigeria’s 2020 #EndSARS (Special Anti-Robbery Squad) movement against police brutality, as feminist political subjects during the 2023 election campaigns. It analyzes Twitter-networked interactions as FemCo was unexpectedly thrust into hypervisibility when asked to endorse Peter Obi, the Labor Party’s presidential candidate, despite prior criticism of their #EndSARS activism. Employing close feminist reading and social network analysis of Twitter data, informed by a contextual feminist/computational approach, this article explores how processes of unpredictable digital intimacies and virtual backstabbing unfold when feminist political subjects are exploited by opposing clusters online. Investigating how affects circulate and transform feminist political subjects into bodies of hate/value, this article sheds light on the affective contexts of political communication in Nigeria, beset by a range of actors, including, activists, influencers, and citizen-users, wielding central power.

Voice: A Useful Concept for Researching Backlash and Feminist Counter-Actions?

Voice is central to claims-making and contestations around gender equality. This article engages with a diverse set of literature, social and feminist movement theory, and gender and development scholarship, to foreground voice in the analysis of the discursive strategies of backlash actors and the counter‑actions by feminist coalitions. Drawing on rich discussions with feminist academic-activists based in the global South and the UK, the article unpacks the various conceptual and methodological challenges that emerge in researching feminist collective voice in countering backlash, particularly on matters such as intersectionality and building collective feminist voice; intra-movement backlash and fragmentation of voice; capturing subtler forms of expressions of agency; and the cyclical nature of backlash.

Transfeminizm(y) – o możliwościach i (granicach) koalicji transfeministycznych

Transfeminist theory makes it possible to think about trans coalitions beyond the alliance formed within the LGB(T) movement. As many authors argue, transfeminism can provide a bridge between feminist and trans politics. However, visions of this coalition vary depending on both their location and the specific author. Since the term “transfeminism” is not widely used in Poland, the purpose of this article is not only to present major transfeminist texts and authors, but also to structure the application of the term and outline its history. The key organizing question of the article, however, is what projects are being formulated within the framework of transfeminist politics and how do they draw a vision of a transfeminist coalition? Since transfeminism is widely considered to be part of third-wave feminism, the article also aims to identify places where transfeminist theory enters into dialogue (and sometimes conflicts) with feminist theory. Key-words: transfeminism, trans studies, feminism, feminist coalitions

Magic of feminist bridging

Are feminist coalitions magical enough to survive and endure while questioning and shaking the colonial/racist foundations of Swedish academic knowledge production and the overall Swedish society? Can feminist bridging and collective writing remain a magical process even when grappling with difficult experiences and memories of othering and racialisation? This is a creatively and collectively written article on feminist coalition building, and its importance in thinking, articulating and deconstructing race, racialization and racist structures. More than two years ago, seven interdisciplinary gender studies scholars of mixed ethnic and racial origins, came together to explore our differently situated experiences of disidentifying with Swedish academia and society in a collective we call Loving Coalitions. Against the background of Swedish exceptionalism, historical amnesia of Sweden’s colonial past and present, and the deafening silence on Swedish whiteness and racism, we are sharing our poems, letters, texts and testimonies of racist interactions in Swedish academia and society. While doing so, we discuss how moving away from conventional ways of doing research and experimenting with creative methodological alternatives, such as automatic writing, epistolary formats, poems, fiction, collective memory-work, allow us to acknowledge and embrace our different life backgrounds and academic trajectories as a mode of knowledge production. We hope and believe that our experiences, refl ections and ways to resist racism and Othering in Sweden and Swedish academia through alternative coalition building, based on mutual care and love, can be relevant in a Danish context as well.

“Don't be our daddy”: Feminist labor on the political left in Armenia

AbstractThe ongoing feminist struggle in post‐Soviet Armenia to imagine a world without patriarchal social arrangements, militarization, and capitalism is multidirectional, involving intimate relations at home, with fellow leftists, and in public political life. Instead of divesting from afforded systemic privileges, both material and representational, leftist men often extend patriarchal power relations to their political work, creating what I call civic patriarchy, an extension of patriarchal power relations leftist men‐comrades practice within feminine‐designated civic work. To the extent that leftist men are invested in patriarchal sociopolitical arrangements, they remain in stronger solidarity with those upholding the existing social order than with their leftist feminist comrades committed to upending it. Drawing on a collaborative project on leftist activism in Armenia today, I examine the work feminists do on the political left to resist their erasure as political actors and to orient the political consciousness of their leftist men‐comrades away from civic patriarchy and toward a more equitable collective life. I argue that a nonhierarchical politics of cultivating relationality that not only sustains our embodied lives in all their materiality but also attunes us to each other with collective life‐sustaining care is key to building broad feminist coalitions across differences.

Centering Feminists and Feminism in Protests in Africa

In recent years, struggles for justice, peace, and democracy around the world have been articulated through protests. Whether in Iran, Nigeria, Poland, Senegal, Tunisia, or the United States, this form of political participation challenges the status quo. Rising forms of autocratic rule, democratic backsliding, and right-wing populism underscore the urgency of protesters’ demands. Often overlooked in mainstream accounts, however, is the role of feminists in driving forward liberatory demands for new social contracts (Sen and Durano 2014). One recent example of this is the role that the Feminist Coalition played in the Nigerian #EndSARS protests, mobilizing against years of police brutality and impunity (Nwakanma 2022). Confronted with physical harm and even death, these feminists and their fellow protesters have strategized and theorized a vision for a better world (Nazneen and Okech 2021; Tamale 2020).

The #EndSARS protest and Black cyberfeminism: a study of the Feminist Coalition and the rise of cyber-feminist ideologies in Nigeria

This study aims to demonstrate how the Feminist Coalition (FemCo) employed digital media to promote feminist causes in Nigeria. Using the #EndSARS protest as a study, we show how Black women championed virtual feminism and Black feminist ideas, resulting in Black cyberfeminism. By translating and reflecting their physical reality into digital experiences, FemCo’s design of the #EndSARS logo raised awareness of intersectionality and demonstrated levels of ongoing struggle and empowerment. Through the use of hashtags on social media, both private and public instances of misogynist remarks were brought to light in response to the adoption of the logo and in opposition to FemCo’s points of view. Employing a qualitative descriptive method of data collection and analysis, we demonstrate how, in a time and space of gendered discourse and patriarchal culture, Black cyberfeminism has become more common in contemporary Nigeria and arrive at the conclusion that FemCo’s tremendous influence is rarely discussed in the current literature on the #EndSARS protest. We further argue that without the FemCo’s active participation and, more significantly, financial support, the #EndSARS protest would not have had much of an impact on a global scale. This is as a result of the thirteen founding members of the coalition’s diverse initiatives.

Stardust and feminism: A creatureliness agenda.

People are living, breathing creatures. Dominant feminist discourses are situated within hegemonic human exceptionalism (HHE) which, by framing the body in terms of human forms of meaning-making and social life, eschews first-order embodiment (or creatureliness) as worthy of inquiry. Here, well-known reasons for avoidance of "the biological" are briefly summarized and an argument is advanced for meta-theoretical centering of creatureliness. A three-pronged agenda is proposed that embraces the creaturely body without the "-isms" (e.g., essentialism) and "-izings" (e.g., so-called "naturalizing") that subvert feminist commitments. By unsettling HHE, executing the agenda would promote broader feminist coalitions and new scholarly collaborations aimed at fleshing out gender.

Discursive Activists or Patriarchal Bargainers? Religion, Gender, and Neoliberal Governance in the “New” Turkey

Abstract This article aims first to contribute to discussions on both the agency of religious women and feminist transversal politics, and second, to emphasize the need to build solidarity coalitions to resist interlocking oppressive structures. It examines the intellectual mobilization of religious women in Turkey (2010–2016), drawing on an ethnographic study of an Istanbul women’s organization. It explores the way religious women contextualized Turkey’s socio-political transformation and analyzed earlier initiatives, and analyses their struggle to challenge the perceptions of them as outsiders vis-a-vis the secularist Republican state patriarchy and Islamist neoliberal patriarchal state. The study concludes that national socio-political transformations curtailed their discursive activism and that broader solidarity networks, transversal politics, and feminist coalitions are necessary to resist such oppressive structures.

“Comfort Women” Memorials at the Crossroads of Ultranationalist, Feminist, and Decolonial Critiques: Triangulating Japan, South Korea, and the United States

This article examines the ongoing debate over “comfort women” memorials, especially one statue known as the Statue of Peace. Whereas Japanese ultranationalists and their foreign collaborators attack “comfort women” memorials for tarnishing Japan’s reputation and spreading historical falsities, progressive scholars sympathetic to “comfort women” victims criticize these memorials for reinforcing female chastity and anti-Japanese nationalism. Examining these varying responses to “comfort women” memorials across the Pacific, this article analyzes how Japanese ultranationalism, anti-Japanese Korean nationalism, US imperialism, and transnational feminism collide in the representation of “comfort women.” By pointing out the significance and limitations of “comfort women” memorials, this article concludes with a discussion of how socially engaged memorials can serve as critical sites for building transnational feminist coalitions in shared struggle against both wartime violence and postwar amnesia.

The Power of Bipartisan Mobilization: The Success of Tunisia’s Feminist Movement During the Coronavirus Pandemic

Abstract The Tunisian government, which is deeply divided, especially along ideological lines, responded to growing concerns over increased violence against women during the Coronavirus pandemic by establishing a new domestic violence shelter and 24/7 hotline. This article asks: Why did the state respond to gender-based violence(gbv) concerns during the Coronavirus pandemic in Tunisia, despite ideological and political divisions? We argue that the state addressed some concerns around violence during the pandemic because combatting gbv has bipartisan support in Tunisia. Tunisian Islamist and secularist women’s rights organizations succeeded in building a bipartisan coalition of support on this issue because they worked either together in a short-lived coalition or in tandem with similar goals over the past decade during the democratic transition in Tunisia. Building on the existing coalition literature, we show that feminist coalition formation before a pandemic has implications for feminists’ success in times of crisis.

Unlikely Feminist Coalitions: Islamist and Secularist Women’s Organizing in Tunisia

AbstractFollowing the 2010–2011 revolution, Islamist and secularist political parties and women’s rights organizations formed coalitions in Tunisia. Nothing of the sort had happened before in Tunisian history. This article considers the conditions that led feminists with different ideological beliefs to create what I call an “unlikely feminist coalition” in Tunisia. I argue that Islamists and secularists can form unlikely feminist coalitions when facing similar threats, working on similar tasks prior to formation of the coalition, the experience of common grievances, and a shared feminist identity. Drawing on the gender politics and social movement literature on coalitions, I suggest that more needs to be understood about unlikely feminist coalitions, especially in the Middle East.

How emotions shape feminist coalitions

This article develops a framework for conceptualizing the emotional dimensions of coalitions, with particular focus on how power operates through emotion in different varieties of feminist coalitions. The article proposes three interrelated areas in which emotion shapes feminist coalitions: (1) Feelings towards coalition partners: feelings of mistrust, anger, fear, or their reverse grow from histories of interaction and unequal power. These make up the emotional landscape of intersectional coalitions, which operate through a tension between negative emotions and attempts at empathy or mutual acceptance; (2) Shared feelings: feminist coalitions build on shared fear of threat or anger at a common enemy; and (3) emergent emotions in collective action. Coalition partners possess distinct emotion cultures. Joint collective action can cement bonds when all participants’ emotion cultures are reflected, or weaken coalitions when the reverse is true. In all three of these areas, organizers engage in emotional labour in order to create or maintain coalitions. These three dynamics are illustrated with examples from intersectional feminist coalitions, the Women’s Marches, and interactions between feminists and conservatives opposed to pornography.

The Promise of Repair: Trans Rage and the Limits of Feminist Coalition

AbstractThis essay theorizes the work of rage at the interface of trans and feminist theories and movements. The juncture of trans and feminist movements is in need of continuing attention given th...

Populism, "Anti" Ideologies, and Feminist Coalitions.

By understanding populism as an “anti-” politics we can see two strands of populism: the anti-democratic strand which marginalizes certain groups of people and the anti-structural injustice strand coming from marginalized people. The potential of this anti-structural injustice activism encourages activists to expand their coalitional politics and government and philanthropic donors to see the import of funding and otherwise supporting work against structural injustice that explicitly takes on patriarchy and racism, among the full gamut of ideologies based on hierarchy and injustice.

Challenging "Americans Are Dreamers, Too": Undocumented Youths' Queer and Feminist Coalition Politics

Challenging "Americans Are Dreamers, Too": Undocumented Youths' Queer and Feminist Coalition Politics

Lessons from Beauvoir for a Transnational Feminist Ethics

Abstract The prospect of a transnational feminist coalition is one of the most challenging questions that feminism faces today. The author analyzes Beauvoir’s involvement with the Algerian decolonization movement and her own self-critique as instructive tools for forming better ways for feminists to engage transnationally. Beauvoir’s existentialist ethics, political writings, and activism continue to offer models for developing an anticolonial and anti-imperialist transnational feminist ethics and are an underexplored resource in transnational feminist scholarship.

Intersectionality and collective action: visioning a Feminist Green New Deal in the US

ABSTRACT In the wake of the introduction of the Resolution for a Green New Deal to the US House of Representatives in 2019, feminist climate justice activists and organisers initiated and cultivated the Feminist Coalition for a Green New Deal. The Coalition advances an intersectional feminist analysis as part of the national conversation about the Green Deal, which entails elucidating and enacting processes for coalition-formation and creating shared values, principles, and policy positions. This article shares insights from interviews with five Coalition members about the relevance of the Coalition’s creation, operating processes, and key outcomes – namely the principles for a Feminist Green New Deal – for communities, advocates, and policymakers, particularly in this moment of reckoning with a global pandemic. Their reflections illustrate their fervent dedication to the feminist tool of intersectional analysis, their proposals for an alternative economy centred on principles of care and regeneration as the essential scaffolding for a Feminist Green New Deal, and their commitment to the power of collective action as the most effective means of movement building. The responses also demonstrate the interconnectedness of feminist climate advocacy with feminist development critiques, the essentiality of a comprehensive reframing of governments’ general policy processes and aims, and the criticality of movement building that is intentional and responsive.

Blowing Glitter Through Straws. Revolutionary Moods in Lizzie Borden’s "Born in Flames" and Jill Godmilow’s "Far from Poland"

The article analyzes two ‘genre-bending’ films – Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames (1983) and Jill Godmilow’s Far from Poland (1984) – as unique spaces of reflection on the temporality of revolution and revolutionary politics of emotion. Drawing on Jonathan Flatley’s work about creating and refreshing revolutionary moods, the author shows how both films worked against the dominant ‘structure of feeling’ of the mid-1980s – feelings of fatigue, hopelessness, and exhaustion with political engagement. The author also examines how both filmmakers use different visual mechanisms and aesthetic tools to generate oppositional moods and revive revolutionary spirits. Instead of trying to establish a straightforward emotional identification of film viewers with the presented movements (the actually existing Polish Solidarity movement in Far from Poland and a fictional multiracial and cross-class radical feminist coalition in Born in Flames), both filmmakers reject what Bertolt Brecht called “crude empathy” and instead insist on the necessity of an ambiguous emotional relationship with diverse political subjects.

"World"-Travelling and Transnational Feminist Praxis in Women Who Blow on Knots

In this paper I propose a transnational feminist reading of Turkish writer Ece Temelkuran's 2013 novel Women Who Blow on Knots through Lugones's "Playfulness, 'World'-Travelling, and Loving Perception." First of all, I argue that the concept of "world"-travelling Lugones recommended to women of color in the US continues to offer valuable insights to women across the world, especially within the frame of contemporary transnational feminist practices. Increasing geographical mobility, enormous circulation of ideas across cultures, and intriguing encounters of local and global paradigms continue to generate complex and nuanced "worlds," while also bringing new forms of oppression, assimilation, and stereotyping, hence new guises of "arrogant perception." Accordingly, travelling to "worlds" of ours and other women's and recognizing differences, plurality, and historical specificity becomes truly indispensable in creating feminist coalitions. Within this frame I argue that the trope of travel in Women Who Blow on Knots underlines the "world"-travelling of four women whose encounter with one another brings forward a transnational understanding of solidarity—one that is not a pernicious totalizing unity but a coalition constructed with a deep understanding of the nuanced plurality of different locations and histories. While the content presents a pluralistic context of a loving attitude, the playful narrative strategies constantly allow space for creative plurality and offer possibilities for a transnational, decolonial feminist writing.