Lost sisters. Feminism is in crisis, torn apart by a generational and political conflict

In the widespread, soft and somewhat cloying brand of feminism that dominates public discourse – the idea that being born a woman today is a marvellous thing, unlike for those unlucky women of the 1950s who still had to fight for their place – one thing is taken for granted: amongst women – or rather, sisters – we understand one another, we support one another, and one’s best friend has never been so fortunate. Rivalry between women – the sort involving hair-pulling brawls – is a thing of the past; it’s a stereotype invented by men to discredit us, or rather to control us more effectively. Ostracised for decades, a burden for generations of female journalists who saw the unmentionable word banned from their vocabulary, feminism is now, as it should be, in vogue. Although, one might be tempted to say. For this collective social recognition is accompanied not by joy at the popularity achieved, but by dismay – or rather bewilderment – at the current state of the women’s movement, which is in the throes of a severe identity crisis. There is a conflictual reality, dormant or ‘agitated’ – as the jargon goes – simmering beneath the surface, because one must first and foremost ‘give back’ to others. And what if one fails to give back? What if one ends up tearing one’s hair out? In late spring this year, the explosion occurred. Words such as censorship, violence and oppression began to surface. There are interruptions, mockery and insults. The issues causing division have been the same for years, ever since the ‘gender’ and ‘woke’ cultural invasion: surrogacy, sex work and intersectionality, which then manifest as a generational clash… The philosophy of sexual difference versus intersectional feminism and transfeminism – we must now speak in the plural.

To honour the memory of the philosopher who taught us our mother tongue and who has just passed away, let us revisit "L’anima del corpo. Contro l’utero in affitto" by Luisa Muraro (Morcelliana, 2023): it was all there already. The truth is that feminism is at a standstill, divided amongst its various factions and unable to formulate concrete objectives, even though they do exist. And yet, despite the existence of a significant presence – comprising thousands of associations, anti-violence centres, women’s shelters, bookshops, magazines, study groups and university courses – this widespread reality has not been channelled into initiatives capable of shifting the balance of power. Because, as we know, the issue of power is the elephant in the room for every woman, and it is even more so at this moment. Desired, rejected, perceived differently, in a fluctuating relationship with the institutions. And today, we are faced with a system that is content with the abundance of female talent on display, yet remains wary of those women who seize and exercise power. The common belief that women in politics “become like men” is as relevant as ever. Having achieved emancipation and shattered the glass ceiling, what of women’s contribution to a new civilisation?

One afternoon during the Milanese heatwave at the end of June, I decided to go to the Casa delle donne in Via Marsala, the community centre for social and cultural promotion that has the backing of the local council: there is a debate on the issue that has sent shockwaves through the women’s movement. Who knows, perhaps in a group setting I might find the key to writing about this situation, which everyone considers truly regrettable, yet equally difficult to tackle. Present is Carlotta Cossutta, a researcher in political philosophy at the University of Milan, an emerging figure on the Milanese scene. The head of the ‘fem roundtable’ introduces the discussion, clarifying that the aim is not so much to debate divisive content but exclusively to focus on the method for addressing the conflict, ‘within the framework of feminist practices of coexistence’. With documents in hand, she summarises the facts, quoting the statements of the opposing parties. At the headquarters of the Casa delle Donne in Pisa, a participant was removed simply because she was no longer welcome. Monica Lanfranco, who was excluded – having been invited in her capacity as editor of the magazine Marea – revealed this on Facebook. A few days later, a public letter from the Rete Dichiariamo network was addressed “to feminists who care about women’s politics and its spaces”. The list of grievances is long: book launches cancelled at the last minute at book fairs, university lectures boycotted, venues booked for debates or presentations revoked the day before – sometimes following email bombardments or veiled threats against the event organisers (can’t you hear the parallels with what’s happening in the rest of the country, at conferences and literary awards?). “It is a trend that we believe must be stopped, in the interests of us all. Never before has the freedom of individual women’s associations been called into question and ostracised by such pressures. Within feminism, there are – and always have been – different positions and perspectives, bitter conflicts and even fierce controversies, but these have always been played out through open debate.”

Another incident in Bologna, where the presentation of Adriana Cavarero and Olivia Guaraldo’s book, "Donne si nasce (e qualche volta si diventa)" – the most controversial title – was cancelled at the Women’s Library. For their part, the young women from Bologna’s "Non Una di Meno" explained that many transfeminists would not have felt comfortable, and that their sensibilities would not have been respected. The wide-ranging debate confirms that cancelling an event is in itself a violent act, and that it would have been better to renegotiate the event. Carlotta Cossutta interjects: “I acknowledge my unease at partly embodying Non Una di Meno. But for generational reasons – I became involved in feminism in the first decade of the 2000s – both the theory of difference and the movement have played a part in my development. I think we need to take a step back; let’s remember that everything has been amplified by social media. I don’t like the word ‘TERF’ being used as a blunt weapon, but nor do I like the term ‘pimp’ being used against those who support sex work. Let’s tone things down and try to forge a dialogue.” The word most frequently mentioned in the debate is ‘relationship’ – the most sought-after yet always inadequate or insufficient concept – and the conversation inevitably returns to it. The divisive issues have been sidelined, but they resurface from time to time. “Let’s leave politics out of our discussions,” says one member at one point – that politics which is becoming more polarised by the day. The underlying thought is: let’s be careful not to get dragged into it. I think I’ve perhaps found the key. I don’t know if we’ve noticed, but in the many recent street demonstrations, there’s no longer any difference between the slogans shouted by the girls and those shouted by the boys. In a sort of throwback to old films, men and women shout in unison, just as in the days of "Strawberries and Blood". Could the universal neutral be re-emerging in an antagonistic guise, as part of a sort of anthropological shift among the younger generations? It’s true that war is contagious and polarising, but must we really legitimise the right to hate and poison the well? Even the ecumenical pacifism that has always distinguished the women’s movement has become tainted. Yet the dissenting and cross-cutting perspective on war has been a cornerstone of women’s thought, from Simone Weil and her reflections on the Iliad, to Virginia Woolf’s 1940 words dedicated to the British pilot in Thinking of Peace During an Air Raid, to Christa Wolf’s Cassandra.

That the climate has become harsher is also demonstrated by book titles. To "What Remains of Feminism" (LiberiLibri, proceedings of the 2025 conference "Feminisms Confronting Woke Culture"), edited by Anna Paola Concia and Lucetta Scaraffia, comes another, "Hands Off Feminism", published by Rizzoli, in which three authors from three different generations – Giorgia Serughetti, Rosi Braidotti and Jennifer Guerra – drawing on Virginia Woolf’s ‘three guineas’ (the sum one must spend to secure one’s freedom) – denounce the right-wing’s misappropriation of feminism and the distortion of its history. And it is not enough that the face of power in recent years has taken on ‘feminine features’ (sic); it is not enough to have a woman at Palazzo Chigi… It is, in short, all-out war, where political confrontation comes into play in full force.

“A section of Italian feminism has always been characterised by this subservience to the barrage of daily events, which captures the mind and leads only to reaction, to choosing to be perpetually against something rather than acting in favour of something,” says the philosopher Annarosa Buttarelli, founder of the School of Advanced Training for Women in Government. “The philosophy of difference identifies the root of thought in feeling, whilst the denial of feeling is the final legacy of Enlightenment thought. Young women, then, are driven by their innate need for justice and fall into the trap, and their sense of freedom is easily reduced to ideology.” Both mystical and fiery, Buttarelli, like Luisa Muraro, hails from the Diotima philosophical community, which originated at the University of Verona. Mystical because she has studied the mystics extensively, holding them up as intellectual models that remain relevant today; fiery because of her forthright nature and her ability to forge links between the diverse strands of the women’s movement. Her latest contribution to the history of feminist thought has been her editing of the reissue of all Carla Lonzi’s writings, for La Tartaruga-La nave di Teseo – which had been out of print for decades – as well as a multi-authored volume also on Lonzi entitled "Ti darei un bacio" (Moretti&Vitali), whilst her latest essay is "Pensiero osceno", Lo scandalo delle donne che pensano, published by Tlon. “European philosophers such as Hannah Arendt and, above all, Maria Zambrano, amidst the turmoil of the Second World War, both condemned the dictatorship of everyday life and warned against the hegemony of news stories. Women’s thinking should rather be nourished by a sense of connection, of openness to others, of love for difference. And by love tout court – what we might today call empathy. Has it ever really existed?”

Buttarelli’s work on Carla Lonzi’s writings has confirmed that desire lies at the heart of the thinking of this icon of 1970s feminism, the author of "Let’s Spit on Hegel" and "The Vaginal Woman and the Clitoral Woman". “The contemporary disaster has killed the capacity to desire; eroticism – that Eros as a love of life – has vanished, and only sex remains, as an object of consumption. We live with a misguided sense of freedom, a sort of Epicureanism that leads us to live for the moment – a state of mind very common amongst younger women, who feel that their future has been stolen from them and cannot see a horizon, that long stretch of time in which work, family and clear goals might find their place. They do, however, have one strength: they are united by a positive sense of togetherness, which is the age-old root of women’s history.”

But what happens to those who are subjected to censorship? We put this question to Olivia Guaraldo, lecturer in Political Philosophy at the Department of Humanities at the University of Verona and co-author of "Donne si nasce" (One is Born a Woman), the most controversial title. “When Adriana Cavarero, at the ‘Ethics Vulnerability’ event in Verona with Judith Butler, asked in the face of protests: ‘Can we say that every one of us here was born a woman?’, the response was a roar that brought the house down. I see in this censorship not only the denial of common sense and new stereotypes that have distorted language, but also the spectre of totalitarianism. When you prevent another person from speaking with a gang-like, bully-ish attitude – through interruptions, boos and laughter – you annihilate your interlocutor and create a double collusion, because it triggers the fear of not being accepted. The logic of opposition has been running rampant for far too long. And we ask ourselves: why has Vannacci come onto the scene? Something, however, is changing: ‘Many young women have had enough; they want to be addressed as women. We are not just one minority among many, and we do not want to disappear into footnotes,’ they tell us. This is precisely the crux of the matter: women are not a social or ethnic group; they are half of humanity, as Edgar Morin would have said.

“We have formally gained our freedom,” Guaraldo continues, “but we have never had a symbolic order that has given us the authority and strength to manage it, and we have imitated the male model of achievement. We are at a stage where women’s freedom has upset the balance, and the attack on our freedom takes other forms. In our book, playing on Simone de Beauvoir’s title, we asked ourselves: as a woman, do I exist beyond my oppression? If we do not untangle this knot, the ideological rifts will remain, creating conformism and partisan reactions.” And then, less social media, please, suggests Guaraldo. “As for me, I’m working on the eros of democracy, on the possibility of public happiness.” Here, once again, is eros, that evoked desire. When it comes to eros, girls, we’ve always been masters.