It seems sometimes that with each year of further social progression, there is somehow more to complain about than there was the year prior. I don’t believe that I’m the only one who has noticed this, and the reason behind it is actually fairly simple. We’ve piled so many issues together in solidarity, that the heart of the original message gets diluted.
International women’s day has just passed and with it there have been a number of conversations circulating the internet regarding women’s equality. This was also the day of the Irish referendum, in which Irish citizens would be voting on a constitutional change that no one seriously cared about concerning women’s roles in society and the household. Naturally, it has led to a culturally tense environment in Ireland. This perfect storm of uplifting positivity coupled with seemingly endless outrage can feel exhausting at times.
Unfortunately, gone are the days when an activist event could be intended to only represent a single issue. It seems that anywhere you see a woman’s protest regarding a specific issue, the protest ends up resembling a messy collective of unrelated grievances. Take a walk down the streets of Dublin and you’ll see posters of women’s movements listing out their goals. To end racism, abolish capitalism, champion the LGBTQ+ cause. You’d be hard-pressed to find a single thing actually concerning women on a women’s movement poster. This is because of a new precedent that’s been set in recent years in which you must be an ally to all other causes if you want to partake in any sort of progressive activism at all.
This isn’t to say that women’s activist movements are silly. They have their place in society and can be very important to voice issues that may otherwise go under the radar. My issue is that they have been corrupted. Whether by blind compassion or subtextual bullying, women seem to have lost their ability to have activism only centered around them. This is not exclusively women’s movement’s either. LGBTQ+ movements have recently felt the need to carry signs reading “Gays for Palestine!”. As if that wasn’t the LGBTQ+ equivalent of saying “Chickens for KFC!”.
Activist movements should be catered towards the group with the grievance. That is where the power of the Civil Rights movement came from as well as the Women’s Suffrage movement in the United States. They focused in on a specific set of demands and hyper-fixated on them until there was a public call for change. However, over the last few years the United States has shifted the format of protesting to a much more intersectional approach. Everyone needs to be advocating for everyone else and their granny and their granny’s dog.
I’m not saying you can’t have your protests. Part of a free society is being allowed to scream to the high heavens all the ways you feel you’ve been wronged. I’m saying this is going about it in all the wrong ways. What exactly does feminism have to do with BLM? This new-age intersectional approach to activism serves only one purpose: to tether a very specific issue to an infinite amount of cultural concerns. Activism isn’t activism if you’re advocating for every single grievance in human history. Women have their grievances, whether you agree with them or not, but they shouldn’t be leached upon by other groups looking for attention or validation simply because they attached themselves to an issue.
The war going on between Israel and Palestine has been difficult to watch, tragic, and hard to decipher. But when you see people marching in pro-Palestine marches with signs saying that the “LGBTQ community supports a free Palestine”, you instantly feel as though you’re being forced into another issue. If you’re worried about babies being bombed in Gaza, you shouldn’t simultaneously be bombarded about how much you support the gay community. Both of these things can be true, both can hold merit, but why are we stacking one on top of the other? In my view, it is a massive misstep in modern activism.
What made Martin Luther King Jr. so rhetorically talented was that he knew exactly the issue he wanted to address: black inequality in the United States. He wasn’t preaching the strife of African children or sea turtles’ infinite struggle with plastic straws. After seeing the way that women’s issues were protested for in Ireland, it seems that there needs to be a massive change in the way that activist issues are addressed. By adding on seventeen layers of problems, you dilute the original message; the one people are willing to passionately march in the streets for. Women’s day should be for women, BLM marches should be just that, and if I see another gay person marching for Palestine, I may just lose my mind.
Cannon Gerber is an opinion writer living in Ireland