Gatekeeping Womanhood Is Not Feminism

3 min read

Just now

Listen

Press enter or click to view image in full size

If someone insists they are not prejudiced but cannot stop talking about trans women, that already tells us the truth. After that first word, everything else is about women. About who counts, who needs monitoring, who needs to be controlled, and who should be pushed out for not fitting the vibe they have decided is acceptable.

“They’ll tell you you’re too loud, that you need to wait your turn and ask the right people for permission. Do it anyway.” — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Look at the pattern. The focus is never on men, power, organisations, or the systems that are actually hurting people. It is always women. Women existing in public. Women taking up space. Women being confident and visible. This is no accident. It is misogyny.

“I want to be able to have fun with how I present myself in the world without feeling like I’m a bad feminist or a good feminist.” — Emily Ratajkowski

It is about control. About turning womanhood into something conditional, something that can be granted or revoked based on looks, bodies, voices, or whether someone makes you uncomfortable. The moment a woman does not perform correctly, the response flips. She becomes the problem. The threat. The moral panic.

“I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.” — Audre Lorde

Their language gives it away. These women are called dangerous, fake, entitled, fetishising, and attention-seeking. They are accused of ruining spaces just by being there. It is not original. Women have been hearing it forever.

“A proper wife should be as obedient as a slave . . . The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities . . . a natural defectiveness.” — Aristotle

The selective outrage is striking because there is no real interest in women who have to deal with violence, poverty, medical neglect, or a system that doesn’t care if they survive. Excluding certain women suddenly becomes urgent, necessary, non-negotiable. That sure as hell is not feminism. It is gatekeeping who they accept, the women who toe the line and stay in their place.

“Half the sorrows of women would be averted if they could repress the speech they know to be useless.” — Mary Ann Evans under her pen name George Eliot

There is a clear overlap here. The very people claiming they defend women keep aligning themselves with movements and figures that are openly hostile to women’s rights. Bodily autonomy is denied. Economic inequality is dismissed. Medical misogyny is downplayed. Abuse is ignored. Deciding which women are ‘valid’ becomes their sole focus.

“Women are decorative. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly.” — Oscar Wilde

They are not protecting anyone if their politics revolve around questioning the legitimacy of women. They are reinforcing a hierarchy that has always existed, one that decides which women are acceptable and which should be silenced: So much for letting women speak.

“People had to adjust to the uncomfortableness of me just existing, not entertaining or delivering or slaying.” — Solange

They do not get to police womanhood. A movement built on control, obsession, exclusion, and constant scrutiny is not liberation. It is not feminism. It is misogyny, recycled and repackaged. We do not owe them compliance.

Say it with your chest. This is misogyny.