On Being a ‘Feminist Human’ in an Anti-rights Era

In an era of accelerating anti-rights movements, our feminist liberation depends not on narrowing the gates of belonging, but on dismantling the very logic of exclusion that has been weaponized against all women.

The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day is ‘Accelerate Action’—perhaps no greater paradox exists for a moment filled with multiple decelerating actions against women’s rights, overturning countless years of global feminist struggles for equality, dignity and the humanization of women. In this moment, I have turned to African feminist foremothers who lived through parallel moments—like Patricia McFadden, eSwatini radical African feminist, and Filomena Chioma Steady, Sierra Leonean African feminist scholar. From their works, I have been thinking deeply about the question of a human and feminist relationality that refuses isolation. McFadden’s particular use of the term ‘feminist human’ stood out to me, as she speaks to the gates that are closed to us as women, especially as women in Africa. 

Agreed, dehumanization might seem an exaggerated concept based on the word ‘feminist human’ alone—after all, humanity should be a matter of fact. Every human is born with agency, the capacity to think, dream and direct their lives. This capacity to dream is encoded in our signifiers of modernity: somebody dreamt that humans would fly, somebody dreamt up electricity, somebody dreamt up the internet, which has made the world a global village, somebody dreamt up automated virtual assistants and artificial intelligence. Humanity and modernity go hand in hand. But let us take a moment to unpack these progressive signifiers of our modernity. Who is human when one faction of the world serves as the labouring bodies upon which this very modernity was built? Whose ways of knowing and loving were obliterated such that our modernity can be directly traced to the dominance of a ‘monohuman’—either through actual invention, appropriation or downright theft? Who pays the price for humanity and modernity? And when we begin to unpack each layer of humanity, who pays the price for men’s apical privilege, for the apical privilege of white women or straight people? 

Every year, The Republic publishes the most ambitious writing focused on Africa, from news and analysis to long-form features. 

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