Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Woke AREN’T Bad Words; Males Manipulate These Words to Divide the Women’s Liberation Movement

Reflections on Feminist Scholar Lorraine Nowlin’s Recent Speech

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PatuxWX0xS8

“Breaking Barriers: Building A Stronger Women’s Liberation Movement In 2025 & Beyond” featuring Lorraine Nowlin and Suzanne Vierling

This is the speech that has inspired my article. This speech was given at WDI USA’s Fourth Annual Convention in Indianapolis, Indiana (September 19-21, 2025). Dr. Suzanne Vierling was unable to attend the event so in this video Lorraine Nowlin’s reads Dr. Vierling’s speech on her behalf. I am deeply inspired by Dr. Vierling’s speech as well and will share reflections in a future post. I only have enough brain power to work through one feminist text at a time. My favorite problem in the world to have is reading something with such depth that I must read it over and over. It is the same feeling I get from reading poetry. I want to revisit the beauty in each word and reflect on the meaning of each stanza. I highly recommend watching all the speeches from the WDI-USA Conference.

If there’s one thing men from every political party share, it’s their ability to cast doubt on cooperation and turn everything into competition and hierarchy. In this topsy-turvey world, males have spent decades working to cast doubt on the benefits of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Males have taken an important term from the Black Liberation Movement, “woke”, and turned it into a slur. I was born in 1983, and witnessed a similar truth growing up with the term “politically correct”, which was the in vogue 90’s insult with conservative talking heads. When women and men in the Black Liberation Movement started popularizing the use of “woke” in online spaces, conservative males like Ron DeSantis made sure to cement the term with a negative connotation, even creating what he called the “Stop WOKE Act.” An effective tactic in movement-squashing is to create slogans that unravel an oppressed group’s message; anything to cast doubt. Trump, the current conservative man’s figurehead, has a sharp acumen for creating and marketing slogans. It would be foolish to downplay the power of a male who can make words hurt and stick. “Grab them by the p***y” and “Lock Her Up” live in the American lexicon because males filled with entitlement and rage made it so. White male supremacists in the U.S. are so effective at propaganda and prejudice that they’ve even turned the phrase “Black Lives Matter” into a supposed dog whistle. For those of us who study the history of movements, it’s disturbingly ironic that the call to see the truth of global colorism/anti-blackness has been turned into a threat. Just as disturbing as a male-controlled world that says seeing the truth of males’ global woman-hating is somehow “man-hating aka misandry.” Slogans, slurs, and other “thought-terminating cliches” work so effectively because we rather have a shallow concept than the depth of truth. But that doesn’t mean all hope is lost. That desire for shallowness is a product of male culture’s thinking. Women can deconstruct these influences if they’re willing to sit with the uncomfortableness and complexities of honesty.

As conditions perpetually grow harsher for women and girls, there’s this raw, painful feeling of betrayal that keeps growing in me, and I also see it growing in other women. Years of organizing have made me tired of diplomacy that doesn’t feel reciprocated. I try to put women’s blind spots to the side and reach for that middle ground. But there’s only so much betrayal one can take. Each time I see hypocrisy within the Women’s Liberation Movement, I notice myself wanting to burn down any bridge because it feels like too many sisters never try to build any of their own. I also know that no woman can be an island, at least that’s what my therapist tells me. So I bravely face this feeling of betrayal, because I know hating my fellow sister’s ignorance isn’t the answer. I know to always go to the roots, because that’s how I will find solutions. The betrayal was first created by males’ and their violence, and it spread to my fellow enslaved sisters who stepped on my head as they attempted to get out of this cage.

I left my liberal/leftist echo chambers and entered into liberal/gender critical-TERF echo chambers about two years ago; but that betrayal still hasn’t lifted. I realize after listening to Lorraine’s speech over a dozen times, that the betrayal transcends any echo chamber and is the feeling of betrayal we all carry as women fighting against males’ terrorism and enslavement. Male Violence Against Women and Girls (MVAWAG) is so omnipresent and normalized it has gone from being publicly known as enslavement to what we now call “prostitution” and “marriage.” Like any enslaved group, women and girls routinely turn against each other. The perpetrator induces this response and builds it into the practice of enslaving human beings. So the current betrayal I feel is underpinned by centuries of males’ working to divide me from my sisters. No matter how keenly aware I have been of this, it doesn’t change the damage of impact.

Radical feminist scholar Lorraine Nowlin of WDI-USA has disseminated a call to analysis and action to all sisters. Nowlin’s gives a speech that is one I’ve been seeking and needing; one that I hope rouses all sisters awake and comfort those who are in pain. Her words are like a salve on the long-standing wounds of betrayal I carry because of males’ violence and enslavement. She reminds me that the barriers I feel are universal amongst my sisters; we all carry this feeling of not being seen and understood. But she doesn’t sugarcoat reality, and reminds us we have repair work to do to take on the barriers.

Nowlin’s reminds us that the tactic of “divide and conquer” wouldn’t work if there wasn’t any wound to poke at, and if we don’t tend to them, then future generations will be left putting more Band-Aids on, instead of getting to the root of male parasitism’s infection. What that requires is ALL women to create “brave space” (coined by Kristi L. Clemens and Brian Arao) and to face our fragilities, shame, ignorance, and fear of vulnerability. Each demographic of women has her story of how male violence destroys her life, and Nowlin’s asks us to listen to ALL women, while centering the full embodiment of our female sex-class. The only way to get from here to there is to confront the triggers, not run from them. That’s actually the true meaning of inclusivity. Inclusion never meant having no specifications or boundaries. It meant including the perspectives of everyone in the room, while making sure that room is accessible to women of ALL colors, creeds, and cultures. Just because men as a class have manipulated the meaning of “inclusivity”, “woman”, and “racism” doesn’t mean we throw the entirety of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in the trash. It doesn’t mean we capitulate to their stance. That is the exact hope of men across the world who dehumanize anyone who isn’t within their specific demographics, all so they can siphon resources, inflict violence, and cover their parasitism without scrutiny.

There’s one part in Nowlin’s speech that hit to the heart of that feeling of betrayal inside of me, and I felt the beginnings of repair:

After hearing this, my diaphragm instantly relaxed and a gentle breath was released. It’s that feeling when someone else in the room speaks up and verbalizes that which you have been feeling but unable to state. I’ve been wishing for that one white woman too. But as Nowlin’s breaks down in her speech, it goes far beyond just white women. We’ve all been wishing for such women of all demographics for many years; women who could see us as fully embodied and not break us into males’ categories or hierarchies. Women who would have our backs in the same way we have theirs. I work painstakingly to move past the many, many betrayals I have experienced from women of all backgrounds. I’m just looking for the same level of strength to be returned. I grow tired of hearing white women terrified of being called racist, but simultaneously downplaying the racism me and my more melanated sisters face (ex. The women who deny the woman-hating of Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump, etc.). It triggers that same feeling I get when men get more upset at being called sexist than at sexism itself. These contradictions in fellow women have taught me that there is no magical, safer space. Women I try to build community with will hurt me with their ignorance. The same social issues that exist in the world, exist in every safer space we try to build. Naming and facing this is how we get through.

Before I could understand this, I have to live through both loyalty and betrayal. I thought I found the women who would have my back in “Leftist/Liberal” spaces, but what I met was the American “white vs. black” framing where white women would self-flagellate or deny instead of moving through triggers and fragility and black women were further dehumanized through pedestalization and this idea that black/brown/of color women couldn’t inflict prejudice. Then I thought I would find the women who have my back in “Gender Critical/TERF” spaces, but what I met was women who downplayed or erased colorism instead of moving through their triggers and fragility. There is no separation of my sex and color, and I was searching for women who could understand this, while utilizing a global perspective of sex and color. Being Indian AKA “brown” as I’m called in the U.S., means I exist in a racial middle outside of my country’s dominant narrative. Having immigrant parents means I exist in a migration story that is not part of the current-day dominant narrative of white and black folks whose ancestry goes back generations on this land.

Nowlin’s speech hits to the heart of so many of these intersections that exist for the Women’s Liberation Movement globally. The U.S. is the ruling empire AND each and every country around the world also exists and the women there are our sisters too. Nowlin speaks to this craving for a unifying message and voice, while interrogating this push for a “unified” mindset. Nowlin’s words are ones that push against denial and shallowness, and reach for diversity, equity, inclusion, and depth in the truest sense of these words. She’s a breath of fresh nuance, instead of the “all or nothing” thinking that rules algorithmic-controlled thinkers. One of the hardest tasks in our work of consciousness-raising is breaking women out of illogical male thinking patterns that try to boil everything down to one-dimensional parts. Oppressing a class of people is a brutal, insane, messy process, so anyone selling you on notions of political simplicity is selling you snake oil. Radical feminist thinkers like Nowlin’s offer an antidote to the bullshittery of male illogicality.

Nowlin’s speech is both a call to action and a call to strategy. We don’t all get along, and we’re not fighting to be friends. We’re fighting to be liberated from males’ entitlement and violence. So if you find yourself steeped in rage against “DEI”, “Woke”, and anything remotely labeled as liberal or Left, then take a step back, take a deep breath, and realize that you’re participating in broken male thought, that you are being duped once again by male supremacism-parasitism. But don’t go off and self-flagellate or deny. Male thinking is a hell of a parasite, and it takes constant decontamination to see through a logical, rational, female thinking lens. I too get those trigger responses to what I perceive as “dog whistles”, and I’ve learned to move through reactivity to analysis and finally strategy. So bask in the female logic that our sister Lorraine shares to help us work through these knotty issues. And remember that women’s consciousness-raising only happens when ALL us women share our diverse viewpoints of root-cause analysis. I leave you these words from our sister that help us break the gaslighting of male thought: