Over on Substack, I write a newsletter titled Unmanned, a chronicling of anti-feminist backlash and what feminist refusal in the face of this backlash looks like. There, I focus on how oppressive beliefs about gender shape our world — everything from our identities, relationships, institutions, and physical spaces to how we think about education, economics, politics, technology, and culture.

I’ve been immersed in writing and thinking about these issues for my entire life and resisted starting a newsletter for a long time. I’m launching this one for three specific reasons.

• First, to write about the ways that anti-feminist backlash is being invigorated across the globe.

• Second, to think out loud about what male supremacy looks like, how it feels to us, and what it means.

• Third, and most importantly, to remind myself and readers that the reason we are where we are is because women and gender expansive people have never been stronger. I want to talk about frontlash, how people’s past and existing refusals to conform to traditional hetero-patriarchal norms is positively changing us, challenging cultures everywhere, and more deliberately shaping the future.

When haven’t people seeking freedom - just by living their lives - not faced backlash? Because feminism - its history, ideals, and necessity - is systemically and institutionally suppressed everywhere, every generation has to come to it in their own way. Today, however, technology — despite all of its very evident harms — has radically disrupted this pattern. We know more about how male supremacy functions, what it looks like in our day-to-day lives, how it fuels white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, other forms of hatred. We know more about the costs to girls and women of our socialized compliance. And we are, like generations before us, finding ways to resist and refuse. Only this time round, it’s far harder, even impossible, to ignore.

Give it a read!