Is Feminism Dead?

Every few years, someone declares feminism dead. The headline changes but the vibe stays the same: "We don't need it anymore", "It went too far", "It's become a brand", "It's fractured", "It's out of touch", "It's been replaced by something else". Sometimes the obituary is smug, sometimes mournful, sometimes oddly nostalgic. And yet feminism keeps refusing to stay buried. It resurfaces in new language, new coalitions, and new battlegrounds, often precisely because the conditions that gave birth to it have not disappeared.

So is feminism dead today? If 'feminism' means a single, unified movement with one set of leaders, one clear program, and one widely agreed definition, then it's easy to argue it's not just dead, it never really existed. Feminism has always been messy. But if feminism means a living political and cultural struggle aimed at ending gender-based oppression and expanding human freedom, then the more honest answer is this: feminism isn't dead. It's contested, transformed, commercialised in places, radicalised in others, and constantly forced to defend its own meaning. It's not a corpse; it's a battlefield.

But what does it mean to say 'Feminism is Dead'

To talk about feminism's 'death', we have to ask: death of what, exactly? Often people are describing one of several things:

It’s OBSOLETE — The belief that major feminist goals have been achieved, so the movement is obsolete.
It’s UNPOPULAR — The sense that feminism has lost popular appeal, especially among younger generations of women or of men generally.
It’s DILUTED — The claim that feminism has become diluted—reduced to slogans, self-help, female self-assertion, product branding, or consumer identity.
It’s SPLIT — The idea that feminism is fractured by disagreements over race, class, sexuality, religion, sex work, and trans rights.
It’s ECLIPSED — The argument that feminism is being eclipsed by other frameworks (eg, human rights, LGBTQ+ liberation, anti-racism, class politics), making 'feminism' feel too narrow.

A clash of rights?

Over the past few years there has been growing controversy over the apparent clash between the rights of trans-women and the rights of natal/biological women to exclusive spaces. The latest, just resolved, occurred at Darlington Memorial Hospital. It involved a group of nurses objecting to a trans-man sharing their changing room. This raises the question about whether there can be fundamental conflicts between the rights of different groups. What would have been the response if the nurses had objected to a black women sharing their changing room? Where does acceptable differences in sensibility end and bigotry and prejudice begin?

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