June Eric-Udorie

The tension is long-standing and perhaps inevitable given that feminism is assumed to galvanise people under the banner of a gender rather than a shared ideological and moral commitment, as a formal organisation, like a political party or a local activist group would. There's no explicit platform for feminism because it's an idea, ownerless and atomised, based on the observation of one specific, persistent source of imbalance in a stunningly unfair world. It can be invoked (cynically or sincerely) by anyone, which is part of why it's been so easily co-opted by corporations who use superficial gestures of pro-woman sentiment for brand management, and by a mainstream media that anoints celebrities like Lena Durham, Taylor Swift, and Amy Schumer as the vanguard of righteous, pro-lady politics.

In our society a fat body is one perceived as deeply out of control, as primitive, uncivilised, and animal. These are all things we are encouraged to despise and fear.
We enforce this othering with interrogation. Fat bodies are endlessly asked to explain themselves. Why? Why are you so fat? Why?
Is it trauma? Did you eat too much? Not exercise enough? Is it depression? Your genes? The way you were raised? The labels on your food? Why?
Each question stands in for the real question: How do you fix it? And even that question stands in the place of the primary concern: How do I, the corporation, make money from fixing it? Or perhaps more accurately: How do I fail to fix it while making it look like I am succeeding and the failure is your fault?

What seems most realistically at stake in adopting what I will term 'strategies of subterfuge' - in which the fears of the powerful are assuaged (or suavely omitted) in situations where is much to gain from doing so - is the personal integrity of activists who want to be of their word, who want to speak their truth. But I also think the record can be set straight later - once we've won.

Without militant activism from groups like the Sexual Liberation Movement in the 1970s, LGBTQ rights would never have been on the agenda in the first place; still, at a certain vital juncture, activists played Mr Nice Gay. I'm as wary of tone policing as the next woke gal. But there's a difficult logic that dictates that sometimes the best feminist tactic is to be no feminist at all; to become, rather, someone to whom the word is irrelevant, even anathema, someone to whom the basic tenets of feminism - remedying female disadvantage, ensuring bodily autonomy, and equality of opportunity - are suspicious demands.

For me, one of the most powerful motivations in being in the public sphere as a journalist is being reminded how a young person may see you and be inspired to dream their own particular dream. An intersectional feminist myself, I believe this is crucial. But at the same time, I see the ways in which representation can be a double bind. The way in which women of colour are expected to explain themselves to white feminists, sometimes even reinforcing the dominant perception, is where representation for representation's sake becomes problematic.

When we do anything remotely different, or are successful and perceived to be 'breaking stereotypes', we are thrust into a spotlight, but these stereotypes are placed on us by someone else. We then have to be ready with answers for the dominant group, who never have to explain themselves or their existence. There is an expectation that we have an emotional story, with exotic embellishments, about overcoming cultural or religious pressures and trauma, which we will then recount for the benefit of the white gaze.

The context is so significant a factor that this is not even about the hairstyles themselves, or Jamaican jerk chicken, now commonly served in restaurants with no Black owners or staff, or African print clothes, so often seen on the catwalks of European designers who continue to show little interest in using Black models. 'Ethnicity,' bell hooks reminds us, 'becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream culture.'

This type of rampant cultural appropriation is a symptom of a commodity culture within a capitalist system, with implications that are predominantly based on race and class. But it is consumption that has special consequences for women. 'When race and ethnicity become commodified as resources for pleasure,' writes hooks, 'the culture of specific groups, as well as the bodies of individuals, can be seen as constituting an alternative playground where members of dominating races, genders, sexual practices affirm their power-over in intimate relations with the Other.'

As I learned more about the details of each visa that might allow her to stay and the policy decisions behind it, it became clear that despite mainstream feminism's general neglect of it, immigration is also a feminist issue.

How could it not be when the majority of immigrants arriving in the UK on much-sought-after Tier 1 category and Tier 2 work visas are men? How could it not be when those on the overseas domestic workers visas are mostly women?

The disparities in numbers of men and women immigrating in different categories matter because these visas differ hugely in terms of the rights they give to their holders.

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Irony aside, the Home Office is making it as difficult as possible for the most vulnerable women (the majority of family migrants are women) to stay in the UK with their partners. Once it approves visas, it strips back non-EU partners' rights as a condition of their probationary residency. Making British citizens responsible for their non-EU partners is a state abdication of social responsibility, a conscious decision from a country that views particular non-citizens as both threatening and less-than, and one that leaves the vulnerable open to destitution and abuse.