What Rosa Gets Wrong About Socialist Feminism
Saoirse Éireann Ní Bhaoighealláin
Within my recent articles on the woke left and an alternative I have made it clear to separate the identity politics of the woke left and the idea of marginalized communities organising for the needs of marginalized communities. I do not fall in the category of the “anti/woke left” reactionary who peddles class reductionist lines that ignore the vast majority of workers. I am a feminist and I say that not as someone who believes “a feminist is someone who believes in equal rights for women” but someone who fights for the liberation of women.
Today I will identify some of the flawed elements of Rosa. This piece will likely only serve as an introduction to my criticisms of Rosa, covering why Rosa fails to attract the working class women Rosa claims to represent. My key point will be that Rosa’s membership is petty bourgeois and cannot respond to the problems that face the female worker. This student-based activist organisation provides no answer or help to alleviate the struggles women face under capitalism and lacks focus on concrete answers on the women’s struggle.
The criticism that feminist movements fail to appeal to working women is not a new one; it has been a long standing issue within the movement but Rosa seems to believe just using words like “socialist” and “we need a working-class mobilisation” is going to achieve that. Talk of building a workers movement is easy. Rosa will do it endlessly, actually building it, however, is a lot more difficult.
Firstly, in proving that Rosa’s base remains heavily centred on the petite bourgeois I decided to take a study of what Rosa as an organisation is talking about their primary issues and how Rosa is applying said issues. A working class socialist feminist organisation would primarily base its work on the most material needs of working women and would seek to address the concerns via material action rather than campaigning which fails to meet the needs of the worker.
To do this I first took an analysis of Rosa’s instagram output with the aim of finding out what issues Rosa was speaking of and how they were addressing these problems. My results were:
- 13 posts about abortion
- 2 posts about the catholic church
- 14 posts about economics, socialism & US politics
- 83 posts about palestine, sudan, anti imperialism & femcide abroad
- 276 posts about gender based violence, domestic violence & sexual violence
- 2 posts about sexism against td ruth coppinger (only post about sexism in the workplace)
- 4 posts about sex work
- 53 misc feminism (manosphere, molly malone etc)
- 61 posts about queer rights
- 40 posts about ipas centres, racism, the far-right
- 5 posts on climate change
- 3 posts on trade unionism
- 3 posts about housing (catu march)
- 2 posts about disability justice
- 4 posts on animal abuse
- 15 misc
What was not covered? Rosa had 0 posts centred on childcare, 0 posts centred on medical misogyny, 0 posts addressing domestic labour inequality, 0 posts centred on specific struggles faced by housewives.
What action was Rosa taking on these issues? Rosa’s main actions involved protests, marching in demos by other organisations or protests put on by themselves, action in the Dáil such as the bills on abortion and counselling notes in sexual abuse trials, workshops, leafleting, public meetings and press conferences and two posts listing numbers for people in crisis situations.
This is a clear student approach to activism which worries a lot more about mass mobilisations of protests and demos than actual direct action, mutual aid and mass work. Protests do not change things but they are solid grounds for recruiting and sending messages. At their best, protests are a threat “we all gathered here to march we’ll all gather here to strike, to occupy, to riot, to revolt”. This is not what a Rosa protest is.
Following my analysis of Rosa’s social media I decided to take a light overview of Rosa’s “socialist feminist manifesto”. The manifesto also lacked direct analysis on the material struggles of women under capitalism. Within the manifesto you will find only 6 uses of the word mother, 4 of which are about single mothers, 7 uses of the word childcare, 7 uses of the word parents, 1 of parental leave and 1 of parenting and a lack of discussion on medical misogyny. For reference, you will also find 48 mentions of the word abortion(s). I am by no means anti-abortion I believe heavily in the right to choose. 1 in 4 women will have an abortion in their lifetime, the fight for the right to choose is important, just as important as ensuring that mothers have access to the resources needed in order to raise her children.
A working class feminist movement ought to be organised to provide for the needs of the working class woman. We recognise the State will not provide for its workers particularly working women who have taken the brunt of austerity measures facing lack of funding in their care sectors where women make up a majority of the workers, a complete lack of childcare and elderly care which has been mostly passed on to female family members and the underfunding of domestic violence resources leaves many women trapped unable to leave abusive situations.
These are the primary concerns of working women and these are what we as socialist feminists need to address. It will not come in the form of policy, but it will be by the working class for the working class, this is the work that needs doing for revolution. The answer is not another protest or to elect more socialist politicians, if we want to change things we can only do so via direct action, mass work and mutual aid. These are the principles that win revolutions.
Rosa spends a lot of time talking of “mobilising against the far-right” but the reality is organisations which specialise in direct action and mutual aid like CATU are doing far more in defeating the far-right than any march, demo or counter-protest. Much of the left has these fantasy ideas of defeating the far-right by counter-protest when really what defeats fascism is the “boring work” of community organising. Communities where people know their neighbour has their back as long as you got theirs are neighbourhoods that the far-right cannot enter.
Much of the organising that has been done against the far-right would be infinitely more valuable if they were spent organising food banks, free breakfasts for school children, building community centres, raising funds for women’s shelters or defending tenants facing eviction. This is the anti-fascist action that will defeat the far-right.
In short, I believe this article has set out why Rosa’s socialist feminism fails to achieve workers support, I also believe that I have set out a call for what Rosa or a new socialist feminist organisation particularly one with a firm basis in republicanism could achieve by organising on the lines of mutual aid, direct action and mass work. Many socialist feminists feel lost without an organisation that is ready to engage with the bread and butter issues of the working class but that is changing. It is about time socialist feminists particularly within the republican sphere start talking about a socialist republican feminist organisation which can organise to meet the needs of working women in order to set about the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist state which keeps women in chains and build the 32 county democratic socialist republic!