In terms of reporting assault, things are rapidly changing, however. Not only are increasing numbers of women reporting sexual assault, they are doing it publicly. The general mood among women around the world is that we’ve had enough. While it is not the first time global feminism is experiencing a peak moment, the “Me Too” moment has brought a refreshing determination to dismantle patriarchy. I’m not at all surprised that the popular hashtag to have followed #metoo is #timesup.

Yet the loudest voices shaping “Me Too” are still predominantly White American, and to an extent Western European. This will limit its success. The war on women is global, and the war against patriarchy too should be global.

Where Freedom Starts: Sex Power Violence #MeToo

The above is the title of a new *free* Verso report available here. It is fantastic. It captivatingly portrays a multiplicity of voices of women involved in Me Too. In fact, the essays in the book make so many crucial connections; between race and sexual harassment; between labour, class and harassment; between history and modernity – weaving together events that have led to this monumental but challenging pinnacle of a feminist moment we’re in. This is a really important document of our times.

I like the message in the title, where freedom starts…sex, power, violence.. One of the especially powerful things about present conversations is that they’re changing power structures in our intimate spaces. It’s one (important) thing to change policy and law, but it’s another (more sensitive, challenging) thing to change social relations. Truth is, when our social relations change only then will our institutions truly change, because they are after all made up of people. Since Tarana Burke’s Me Too was popularised by Alyssa Milano, I don’t think I’ve engaged in conversations of depth, you know the type where you “really” talk about stuff, that did not address the topic of changing gender dynamics.

I’ve been in Nigeria most of the time since the discussions erupted, and the discussions there – as so many discussions in Africa – are either far more progressive than in the West, or far more regressive. So on one hand, women are less polite about their feminism than in the West and men are also more curious about feminism than Western men. On the other hand, it’s still alarmingly popular among men especially, to claim that feminists harbour irrational vitriol towards all men.

WORD OF ADVICE: Whenever people start throwing around accusations of man-hating feminism into a discussion, they are scared to their drawers that you, Fearless Feminist Warrior, might say something that will close down the debate. It is the simplest tactic. You bet it will be followed by the predictable assertion that honouring our biological roles is not about sexism. You know, like that time Trump said the issue of kneeling has nothing to do with race but about the country and the flag.

My #metoo story

Speaking of documenting women’s narratives, as a Black feminist writer with dissenting views on patriarchy, imperialism and capitalism, I have never been comfortable with my ideas existing in social media alone. That’s why I’ve kept this blog going for almost a decade, so that I, at least to some measure, own the public archive of my writing and can easily access it because, you know, where is that tweet about that thing that I posted on that day.

I’m therefore reposting a Facebook/Instagram post concerning #metoo below to store it here in my archive.

Of many reasons #metoo hasn’t kicked off in Nigeria, a key one is that no one would listen unless the women speaking up are celebrities or elite women, and they on the other hand have too many men in their intimate circles (family or business ties) who are guilty of sexually violating women. A case in point was when a brave woman known as Sugabelly named her rapist, Mustapha Audu, in a 2015 blogpost and was consequently verbally butchered by scores of misogynist Nigerian commentators, female and male. Sugabelly was ahead of her time, and I often wonder if the barrage of abuse directed at her would be less assassinative now under the umbrella of #metoo. Similarly, when I wrote about being raped in a 2013 blogpost, it was telling (and heartbreaking) that I for weeks received messages from countless Nigerian (and African) women who shared their rape stories with me. So, I wonder, why are no Nigerian women speaking up even now that the #metoo conversation is popularised via the global narrative? To be clear, I’m not advocating that any woman should put herself out there for #metoo, however influential and radical a moment the hashtag has birthed. It’s not an easy thing to do at all! Even in my case, although I have no regrets about sharing my story, I suffered consequences that I wouldn’t wish on anyone and I didn’t even name my rapists (because I don’t know their names). But I’m nevertheless interested in the cultural factors that make women keep firmly silent about sexual violations in a country where sexual violation is commonplace. There is something hauntingly loud about this silence, it’s like a tinnitus. Has anyone any thoughts on why it may be?

LOVE, MAYBE
Always
in the middle
of our bloodiest battles
you lay down your arms
like flowering mines
to conquer me home.
— Audre Lorde

In a world dominated by facades and appearances, where the messy complexity of life is obscured by perfection masquerading as trust, can love prevail? A world where relationships are built on power, eroticism is confused with consumerism, the mind is severed from the body, and the body is divorced from nature. Where the foot soldiers of patriarchy — misogyny and sexism — infiltrate the interior and exterior geographies of embodied souls, can love, in its true form, survive?

In Love, Maybe, Audre Lorde captures the struggle of sustaining love within a paradoxical dynamic where love is uncertain, and uncertainty is love. Should these feelings of disorientation and doubt shape our understanding of love? Should love be experienced as war, however familiar or flourishing that war may feel? And if not, why does love so often exist within this suspicious terrain of ambiguity for so many women?

The maybe in Lorde’s poem occupies a liminal space between certainty and doubt, blurring the line between love and desire on one hand, and power and control on the other. It’s a familiar maybe that causes many women to feel dissatisfaction, mistrust, and even boredom in relationships. Yet, this co-mingling of possibility and danger — represented by maybe — is so normalised that it’s mistaken for love.

I capitalise love (and later intimacy and romance) because I want you to think of love as something that can be embodied. Imagine love as a character, and consider what traits this character might possess. Would love engage in “blood battles”? Would love weaponise itself to “conquer” the other?

I don’t believe so. Not because love is sanctimonious or dutiful, or because love, in itself, should provide security. Love has no responsibility; it simply is. Duty, safety, sacredness — however desirable these features might be — are merely narratives we’ve culturally attached to love. But love is not a narrative; it is a passion, a flame of feeling, an intense and mysterious force that causes you to lay down your weapons. Love is not war; it is a disarmament.

I’ve been reading Audre Lorde’s work for many years. Her book Sister Outsider has shaped the feminist writer I’ve become and served as a major inspiration for my latest book, Sensuous Knowledge. Given my familiarity with her work and her critical, poetic dismantling of patriarchal and heteronormative structures, I can’t help but interpret Love, Maybe as an invitation to contest the ambiguities of love. Though I acknowledge the poem could also be read as a validation of these murkinesses, as an acceptance that love is never straightforward.

This interpretation is valid too. The protagonist of the poem seems to find solace in the space of ambivalence. But in my reading, Lorde invites us to consider the cost of uncertainty in love. If the body of the poem doesn’t reveal the doubt and uncertainty within the setting, the maybe in the title speaks volumes.

What is sacrificed in the swampy land of maybe?
I would argue: intimacy.

In relationships, women often desire attributes such as closeness, honesty, friendship, sensuality, and depth — all of which are connected to intimacy. But intimacy is nowhere to be found in maybe-land. Intimacy thrives in the word yes, not in maybe.

As Lorde herself said, “We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves.” Too often, women hide their desires for intimacy because of this fear to say yes within. It takes more certainty, more confidence and vulnerability than many can muster, to ask for the presence of intimacy. Instead of vocalising their needs for honesty, friendship, and sensuality, patriarchal narratives allow women, at best, to ask for patriarchy’s substitute for intimacy: romance.

Yet, intimacy and romance are juxtaposed characters. Romance revels in doubt and uncertainty; intimacy requires clear and deliberate invitation — albeit not necessarily vocalised. Romance enjoys blurry lines; intimacy prefers boundaries.

I’m not against romance per se. The romantic dance can be enchanting as long as both partners appreciate that it is, indeed, a performance. It’s a dance with fire, and the blistering heat can be bedazzling. There are nuances and philosophical implications to romance, but in its mainstream form, romance is a trickster whose main trick is to simultaneously invoke and extinguish intimacy.

Romance relies on the hero archetype, typically male, with an otherworldly capability to transform lives emotionally, practically, psychologically — you name it. Romance’s trick is to plant a need for a hero in women’s minds, encouraging them to associate male behaviours with heroism.

Heroism, in turn, aggrandises and distorts qualities that may or may not be worth appreciating into forms of worship. What may be nice qualities in a lover — a successful career, charming looks, kindness, even feminist credentials — are deemed heroic.

Moreover, the hero is always the main character. No matter how empowered the supporting act may feel, they remain secondary. Romance not only creates a longing for heroes but also instils in women a crippling desire to be the secondary figure in love, making romance one of patriarchy’s biggest allies.

Rethinking the language of love has been part of the feminist project from the start. Patriarchy may have superimposed romance as the single yet unattainable way of understanding love, but we can learn about love from other sources — from the more-than-human world, from nature, poetry and mystery, from intuition and female genealogies. The writer Luce Irigaray suggests saying “I love to you” instead of “I love you.” Rather than saying “I am in love,” bell hooks suggests saying, “I am loving” or “I will love.”

Audre Lorde offers us Love, Maybe. The Lordeian maybe is a key. Behind the locked door lies an interrogation of love’s ambiguities — is what we typically consider to be love truly love?

Probably not.

By the way, have you heard that joke about when love, intimacy, and romance walked into a bar?

No?
Okay, here it is:

Love, intimacy, and romance walk into a bar. The bartender looks at them and says, “What can I get you three?”
Love says, “I’ll have Poetry Is Not A Luxury with an infusion of passion and eros.”
Intimacy says, “I’ll take the ‘Yes Within’ cocktail — and add a shot of the erotic as a source of power.”
Romance chuckles and says, “I’ll have the ‘Classic Love Story,’ with the usual hint of danger.”

I’m sharing some reflections and pictures from a 2024 highlight in June, when I organised an event titled “From Crisis to Liberation” as part of the program Black Feminism & The Polycrisis, which I lead as Research Chair at The New Institute.

What is the polycrisis? It’s the entanglement of interconnected crises—climate change, wars, economic instability, social inequality—each crisis worsening the others.

The dominant response to the polycrisis reflects the standard europatriarchal approach: Decision-makers are predominantly white and male, it relies on techno-optimism, reductive dualisms, and scientism (not to be mistaken with something being scientific).

For two years, I have worked on this program alongside brilliant black feminists to challenge the exclusion of our voices from these discussions. The program exists to intervene in this annihilative europatriarchal framework of crisis management with decolonial, feminist visions.

From where I write this, in Nigeria, I see the long shadow of this framework, which has created a perpetual state of crisis for centuries. As women, we have lived in man-made crises for millennia. And as women of African heritage, we have much to say about crisis.

The term “Liberation” framed the event because liberation is not just intellectual or feel-good — it’s about knowing, being, feeling, transforming and experiencing. Liberation is a radical concept: it points to the future, to hope and joy, but it also confronts the present truth that we are not yet free.

The event honoured sensuous knowledge. The space celebrated ecology and nature, recognising that humans are an extension of both. Art, music, talks, film, and conversation came together, without hierarchy, to create a holistic experience.

I am deeply grateful to our amazing guests:

• The phenomenal Sandra Nkaké, who brought us to a place of awe and liberation. There are no adequate words to describe her gifts, they need to be heard.
• The scholar Akosua Adomako Ampofo, who illuminated the layered history of our liberation movements.
• The breathtaking film Mami Wata by CJ Fiery, which unravelled history, gender, and myth.
• The art by Mac Premo, an eclectic collage capturing the spirit of our collective work.
• Th photography by Luzia Cruz, which captured the day.

My heartfelt thanks to all who participated.

As many of you, I find myself reflecting on 2024 and I wanted to share one of the most significant moments for me this year, namely undergoing surgery for endometriosis, a condition that affects 5% to 10% of people with a uterus. 

Endometriosis occurs when endometrial-like tissue grows outside the uterus, and in rare cases, like mine, it can grow in other parts of the body. (I suffer from umbilical endometriosis.)

Yet, despite being so common, it takes an average of TEN YEARS to get diagnosed.

Why? The medical industry says it’s because the symptoms overlap with other conditions.

But wait, isn’t that true for most illnesses?? 

Or maybe the real reason is that it doesn’t affect cismen?

Imagine if 10% of male people endured debilitating tissue growth in random parts of their bodies. Would it still take a decade to diagnose? Would we see this neglect, or would we see comprehensive education for medical professionals, prioritised funding for research, early screening methods, diagnostic tools, specialised care, and plausibly a cure?

I believe that one day, when feminism finally shifts the neglect of women in healthcare (and other domains), endometriosis will not only be diagnosed swiftly but will also have a cure.

Right now, there’s no cure. Many turn to alternative therapies, lifestyle changes, hormonal treatments, before eventually opting for surgery.

Even surgery is not a complete solution. While the pain is often reduced, it’s rarely eliminated. I still manage symptoms by adjusting my lifestyle, but surgery was a game changer for me. 

Surgery is a big decision, and I’m not writing this to advocate for it as such. Each case is unique.

What I do want to say is this: even if society doesn’t yet take endometriosis seriously, your symptoms are not trivial and something you should “just cope with.” It’s hard to imagine illnesses that have such severe consequences that affect all sexes, being treated as flippantly as endometriosis still is. 

I have a diagnosis for this: patriarchy.

I’m thrilled to share a talk I gave recently at Puistokatu4, a space for science and hope in Helsinki. The talk is about the dominant philosophy of the 21st century – what I refer to as Europatriarchal Knowledge. It delves into the foundational roots and methodology of Europatriarchal Knowledge from its inceptions in Ancient Greece to fifteenth century Europe to our present day polycrisis. I also suggest feminist and holistic shifts and why those especially matter now. These are subjects that I think are crucial for feminists to engage with, and I do so also in my forthcoming book Can Feminism Be African? – because to thoroughly understand an oppressive system is in many ways to dismantle it.

You can watch the full talk below:

I hope it inspires thoughts and reflections. The audience had great questions for me, and I would love to hear from you too.  Please let me know if you have any thoughts or questions by leaving a comment below! What resonated with you the most? 

I am so thrilled to share that our film Black Feminism and the Polycrisis has won the silver award for Public Service and Activism at the 14th Annual Lovie Awards—the most prestigious pan-European awards recognising Internet excellence, with over 1,200 entries from more than 35 countries this year. 

Our film was also shortlisted for Best Art Direction and for the People’s Favourite Award. This recognition is a win for black feminist perspectives and for all of us pushing for change.

This wouldn’t have been possible without the incredible group of fellows who joined my program of the same title, Black Feminism and the Polycrisis at The New Institute, and the brilliant filmmakers @macpremo and incredible composer @shishani.music who all brought this vision to life.

Thank you to everyone who has been part of this journey. When I conceived of the project, I could never have dreamed of the impact it would have and the people I would build with, it’s everything to me. I really enjoyed working with film as a medium, a first but hopefully not last for me.

 
A Film by Mac Premo & Adrianna Dufay

Creative Director: Minna Salami
Sound Design & Mix: Mac Premo and Hearby Sound
Musical Score: Shishani

Photography: Mac Premo

In 2022, historian Adam Tooze introduced the term “polycrisis” to capture the complex web of crises like climate change, pandemics, inequality, wars, and economic downturns impacting our world. It quickly became a buzzword in influential circles—from the World Bank to university lecture halls and podcasts.

When a term gains such explosive traction within key institutions, it becomes important for feminists to engage with it. Patriarchal power typically takes refuge in “high-level” decision-making and agenda-setting platforms, precisely where the term polycrisis also travels.

Black feminists are not typically called upon to respond to “big” global political phenomena like the polycrisis. This gap prompted me to chair a year-long program on black feminism and the polycrisis at THE NEW INSTITUTE, a platform that gathers thinkers across disciplines to engage the challenges of our time, and to make a film about it.

Black feminism has long been responding to intertwined crises through concepts like intersectionality, which highlight how systems of oppression overlap and compound. As Audre Lorde wrote in Sister Outsider about the ways the global machine, “orchestrates crisis after crisis and is grinding all our futures into dust”. Contemporary work by black feminist scholars such as University of Sheffield Professor Akwugo Emejelu also explores the impacts of crisis in Europe, and Duke University Professor Jennifer Nash’s similar explorations of black women and crisis in the US context. While the term “polycrisis” may be new, its challenges resonate deeply within black feminist thought.

Traditionally, “solutions” to such crises are crafted by predominantly white and male perspectives, despite these crises disproportionately affecting women, black, and brown communities. This skewed approach fails to address the root causes or involve those most affected in meaningful solutions.

To give with one hand and take with the other, does not solve the polycrisis. This is why those most affected by multiple and overlapping crises need to have a say in how we address them. Marginalised, minoritised, and disenfranchised groups have a grasp of critical situations that are not only theoretical but also experiential. This makes them less likely to formulate duplicitous “solutions” to the polycrisis.

Black feminists not only critique these biases, however, but offer alternative, more inclusive ways to understand and respond to crises. They emphasize the need for diverse voices and holistic approaches that blend critical argument, analysis, aesthetics, imagination, and embodied knowledge—a “black feminist poetics.”

At THE NEW INSTITUTE in Hamburg, we’ve been exploring these ideas and we made a short film that could reflect them. As Professor Akwugo Emejelu reminds us in the film, “These are problems about imagination and the exclusion of different voices and ideas from the decision-making table and black feminism has important things to say about that.”

Watch our film below, and if you are in New York this week join us for a screening and discussion at the Brooklyn Circus.

 
A Film by Mac Premo & Adrianna Dufay

Creative Director: Minna Salami
Sound Design & Mix: Mac Premo and Hearby Sound
Musical Score: Shishani

Photography: Mac Premo

I am pleased to share a recent interview with the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP)

We spoke about feminism today — with a focus on African feminism at the intersection of current crises and debates.

See some extracts below and read the full interview here.

Read more about the program in THE NEW INSTITUTE’s press release below and follow our upcoming work here.

Press Release

ANNOUNCEMENT “BLACK FEMINISM AND THE POLYCRISIS”

THE NEW INSTITUTE is proud to announce the launch of a pioneering program titled “Black Feminism and the Polycrisis: Configuring a Novel Solution Space Through Intersectional Methodology,” running until June 2024.

At a moment when the world desperately needs transformative visions, the program offers a forward-thinking space to converge bright minds dedicated to challenging the status quo and reshaping the global discourse on crises.

How can the unique insights and intersectional methods of Black Feminism respond to the complexities of the contemporary polycrisis?

Chaired by feminist author and social critic Minna Salami, with her “epistemically polyamorous” vision, this paradigm-molding working group convenes at THE NEW INSTITUTE’s Warburg Ensemble in Hamburg. It is comprised of six eminent fellows who are intellectual leaders and experts in their respective fields.

The fellows in this distinguished group are:

KATHRYN SOPHIA BELLE
Philosopher and Author. Founding Director, Collegium of Black Women Philosophers. Founding Director, La Belle Vie Academy. Previously Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University.

AKWUGO EMEJULU
Author and Professor of Sociology at University of Warwick.

PUMLA DINEO GQOLA
Author and Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies, and Research Chair of African Feminist Imagination at Nelson Mandela University.

ABOSEDE PRISCILLA IPADEOLA
Author and Assistant Professor of Philosophy at University of Ibadan. Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

MAHA MAROUAN
Author and Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, African American Studies and African Studies, and Director of Graduate Studies at Pennsylvania State University. Scholar in Residence, Harvard University.

ADENIKE OLADOSU
Climate Activist, Nigeria. Fellow, “Panel on Planetary Thinking” at Justus Liebig University. International Climate Protection Fellow, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

The group is joined by the philosopher and scholar, Delicia Antoinette- Kamins, as program coordinator.

The working group grapples with the central question “How can the unique insights and intersectional methods of Black Feminism respond to the complexities of the contemporary polycrisis?”

Since the Financial Times declared 2022 “the year of the polycrisis”, we recognize (or respond to) the need to delve deeper into this pervasive topic and to provide a forward-thinking lens of understanding by drawing from the wealth of Black Feminist thought. Toward that end, the group will:

• Address patriarchal and Eurocentric diagnostics,
• Elevate intersectional theory, emphasizing Black and African diasporic perspectives; and
• Challenge conventional “crisis mode” methodologies and articulate new visions and possibilities grounded in intersectional insights.

In this era of uncertainty and unrest, THE NEW INSTITUTE’s initiative promises a novel perspective that could redefine the way we understand and navigate our global challenges.

For more information or interviews, please contact Minna Salami (minna.salami@thenew.institute).

Download our Press Release in English or German.