Lean In and Shut Up: Corporate Feminism Was Always A Scam

Section I: Lean In, Sell Out

In the beginning, there was Gloria Steinem. Then came Sheryl Sandberg — and suddenly, feminism wasn’t about burning bras or dismantling patriarchy. It was about better posture in the boardroom.

What once was a radical demand for systemic change became a marketable mindset — shrink-wrapped, TED Talk’d, and served on LinkedIn as empowerment for the modern woman. “Lean In,” Sandberg told a generation of ambitious professionals. And they did — into meetings, into mentorships, into burnout, and into a system that was never built to reward them.

But let’s be clear: Sandberg didn’t invent this hustle. She just branded it better. What she did — and what corporate feminism perfected — was give power structures a feminist facelift. No longer was the problem structural exploitation; it was that women weren’t negotiating hard enough. Not enough confidence. Not enough hustle. Not enough “lean.”

And it sold. It sold millions of books. It sold management seminars. It sold company-wide DEI initiatives that hired consultants but never raised wages. It sold the idea that the best feminism was the kind that didn’t threaten capital, didn’t organize labor, and definitely didn’t scare the shareholders.

But underneath the platitudes and PowerPoint slides was a much older truth: the system doesn’t need you to smash the patriarchy — it just needs you to sell it in heels.

We’re not talking about liberation. We’re talking about licensing. Branding. Optics. The illusion of progress, sold by women at the top to make everyone else forget the ones still scrubbing toilets, clocking out at midnight, and dodging predators in break rooms with no cameras.

“Corporate feminism” was never built to free anyone — it was built to monetize aspiration and defang revolt. And like all things in late-stage capitalism, it was profitable because it never actually had to deliver on its promises.

This post is going to tear the mask off.

Section II: Feminism for the Boardroom, Not the Break Room

At its core, corporate feminism isn’t about liberation — it’s about logistics. HR policy. Slogans etched onto glass walls and recycled in press releases. It’s the kind of feminism you can safely present in a quarterly report. The kind that plays well with shareholders and doesn’t interrupt the profit margin. And most importantly, it’s the kind that leaves the actual working class woman exactly where she’s always been: unseen, unpaid, and unheard.

Let’s start with the obvious. When Sheryl Sandberg said “Lean In,” who exactly was she talking to? It wasn’t the woman closing at a 24-hour CVS, picking up a double shift because her childcare fell through. It wasn’t the single mom at the Tyson chicken plant whose manager cuts her hours to keep her off benefits. It wasn’t the janitor, the nursing assistant, the warehouse packer, the hotel maid — the vast underclass of American women whose daily labor keeps the economy from collapsing.

No — Sandberg’s message was aimed straight at the educated white collar strivers, the junior execs and PR coordinators with corporate ID badges and dreams of the C-suite. These were women who could afford to worry about glass ceilings because they’d never had to mop a floor on their knees.

Corporate feminism never intended to empower the masses. It intended to placate a specific tier of upwardly mobile women just enough to keep them from joining the real resistance — the kind that organizes, unionizes, and threatens the foundation of unchecked capitalist power.

Identity Politics as a Safety Valve

What corporate America figured out — brilliantly — was that if you give people just enough recognition, they’ll stay in line. So feminism was rebranded, watered down, and surgically detached from its working-class roots. Suddenly, inclusion wasn’t about restructuring power — it was about visibility. Representation became the end goal, not the beginning of deeper change.

Put a woman on the board. Launch a Women’s Leadership Summit. Add a pink ribbon to your packaging. Praise diversity, sponsor a brunch, sell a t-shirt. And if she complains? Tell her to speak up. Be assertive. Have confidence. Learn to negotiate. Take a class. Take a breath. Take responsibility.

And all the while, the real levers of oppression remained untouched. No wage hikes. No childcare. No healthcare. No paid leave. No protection from predatory bosses. Just a new flavor of gaslighting, dressed up in pastel blazers and Pinterest quotes.

Because the truth is ugly: the moment feminism became profitable, it was co-opted. Identity was turned into a subscription model. Empowerment became something you bought, not something you fought for.

The Illusion of Progress

The result? A generation of women who were taught that success meant assimilation — becoming more like the men who’d excluded them. That to get ahead, you didn’t tear the system down — you leaned in. You played the game. You smiled through the harassment, stayed late, spoke “strategically,” and never, ever made the men in charge uncomfortable.

This is the quiet rot at the heart of corporate feminism. It pretends that capitalism and patriarchy are separate, when they’ve always been fused at the hip. It offers women a seat at the table, but only if they agree not to question who built the table — or who’s still scrubbing the floor beneath it.

In truth, the boardroom isn’t liberation. It’s assimilation. And when you “succeed” in that world, all you’ve proven is that you’re no longer a threat.

Because the real victory isn’t getting one woman promoted. It’s dismantling the structures that demand millions more stay silent so that one can rise.

Section III: When Empowerment Became a Product

If Section II peeled back the ideological co-optation of feminism by corporate boardrooms, this section drags the movement’s commodification into the fluorescent light of the digital mall. Because somewhere between the TED Talk and the Target endcap, empowerment stopped being a political goal — and became a brand.

You’ve seen the signs. Literally. On mugs, on notebooks, on neon-pink gym bags and throw pillows:

“Nevertheless, She Persisted.”

“Boss Babe.”

“Empowered Women Empower Women.”

These aren’t rallying cries — they’re inventory SKUs. Mass-produced aphorisms sold to you by the very companies that refuse to offer paid maternity leave or protect employees from harassment. The aesthetic of empowerment is now so thoroughly monetized, you can pick it up at TJ Maxx between a bath bomb and a clearance-rack cardigan.

Feminism™: Sponsored by Brands

The corporate colonization of feminism has turned struggle into style. Now, it’s not enough to fight for equality — you’re expected to look good doing it. Lipstick lines, fashion collabs, influencer partnerships. Women’s History Month, brought to you by Dove. Gender equity, served with a side of branded content.

And the deeper truth here is worse: capitalism has no ideological loyalty. It doesn’t care about women. It doesn’t care about men. It only cares about leverage — and selling empowerment back to women has become one of the savviest PR flips of the 21st century. Take the language of resistance, strip it of context, mass-market it to the very people it was meant to liberate — and then sit back and collect the ad revenue.

What was once a critique of patriarchy is now a capsule collection at Nordstrom.

What was once a protest chant is now a podcast intro.

What was once a call for solidarity is now a “SheEO Summit.”

Girlbossing as Gaslight

Here’s where the “Boss Babe” myth really breaks down: it subtly blames women for their own exploitation. Can’t get ahead? Try working harder. Can’t find work-life balance? Hustle smarter. Still underpaid? Negotiate better. Take the course. Fix your mindset. Upgrade your calendar app. Manifest more.

This is the same bootstrap bullshit that’s been weaponized against workers for decades — just with a pink Instagram filter. It individualizes what are clearly structural problems. And it keeps women locked in a never-ending self-improvement loop, always one step away from the breakthrough they’re told is just over the next hill.

But there is no hill. There’s just a treadmill — and you’re running on it in heels.

The kicker? When this “empowerment” model inevitably fails, the blame doesn’t go to the system. It falls on the woman herself. She didn’t lean in enough. She wasn’t assertive enough. She didn’t manifest hard enough. She was too aggressive. Or not aggressive enough. Or just not “the right fit.”

Feminism As Subscription Service

Today, feminism has been sliced into a hundred niches and bundled into lifestyle choices. Want to be empowered? Subscribe to the newsletter. Buy the planner. Join the cohort. Get the t-shirt. There’s a market solution for everything — except justice.

And while you’re swiping your card, the women cleaning offices at night and raising kids without healthcare still aren’t seen as part of the movement. Because this version of feminism isn’t for them. It’s for the customer.

It’s no coincidence that the most visible feminist icons in pop culture are celebrities, CEOs, and influencers — not teachers, nurses, or line cooks. Power is still defined by visibility, wealth, and platform, not solidarity, sacrifice, or change. We’ve been sold a liberation that fits neatly on a Pinterest board and doesn’t mess with the supply chain.

Section IV: From Rosie to Résumé — How Real Feminism Got Erased

Before there was a Lean In™ keynote or a #GirlBoss mug, there was Rosie the Riveter — sleeves rolled, brow furrowed, staring down the war machine with a wrench in hand. She wasn’t pitching a startup. She wasn’t optimizing her LinkedIn. She was doing real labor in a real factory because the country finally needed her — and let her in.

But when the war ended, so did the invitation. Rosie was told to go home. And the economic order quietly, efficiently shoved working-class women right back into the margins of public life. What followed wasn’t empowerment — it was erasure. And it would happen again. And again. And again.

The Feminist Movement’s Forked Road

Second-wave feminism, emerging in the 1960s and ’70s, should have built a bridge between Rosie and the boardroom — a movement that included secretaries and CEOs, single mothers and professors, Black nurses and white housewives. But it didn’t.

Instead, the movement was split down the middle.

On one side: women who wanted power within the system — better jobs, legal rights, professional parity. On the other: women who wanted to dismantle the system — end capitalist exploitation, reject traditional gender roles, rebuild society from the ground up.

Guess which side got the book deals, the interviews, the NGO jobs, the cable news hits?

The system adopted feminism only once it became clear it could do so selectively — elevating a narrow, professional class of women who wouldn’t question the underlying rules of the game. These were the women who would be offered the résumé boosters, the fellowships, the corner offices — and in return, their version of feminism would erase the working class from the conversation.

Class? What Class?

Once you understand that, you understand the blind spot at the heart of corporate feminism: class is never part of the picture. That’s why the modern workplace is still an open wound for most working women. It’s why real reproductive rights still vary by zip code. It’s why unionizing is framed as a threat — even by female executives who post International Women’s Day graphics on LinkedIn.

Corporate feminism has no language for the grocery store clerk being harassed by her shift manager. Or the undocumented nanny working 80 hours a week with no benefits. Or the hospital aide holding the hand of a dying patient for $15 an hour. It can tell them to “be brave,” but it can’t raise their wage.

Rosie’s descendants are still here. They’re cleaning your schools, running your bus routes, changing your hospital linens — but they’re not at the “Women in Leadership” luncheons, and they sure as hell aren’t getting profile pieces in Forbes.

What the Résumé Revolution Left Behind

Today, the dominant narrative of “feminist progress” is built on the myth of linear advancement: more women in tech, more women in politics, more women in the C-suite. But while a few have ascended, the base has been abandoned.

Real progress doesn’t mean you can aspire to be the next Sheryl Sandberg. It means you don’t have to beg for parental leave, fear your manager, or pray your boss believes you when you report abuse. It means your job, your health, and your dignity aren’t conditional on corporate performance reviews or your ability to smile through misogyny.

Because feminism wasn’t supposed to be about representation alone. It was supposed to be about liberation.

And liberation doesn’t come in a quarterly performance review.

Section V: The Sisterhood Is for Sale — Why Capitalism Loves Identity Politics

If you want to understand the unholy marriage between corporate America and modern identity politics, start by asking one simple question:

Why does every Fortune 500 company suddenly sound like a gender studies major on Twitter?

It’s not because they care. It’s because they’ve figured out how to make performative allyship profitable — and how to weaponize representation to keep workers quiet and consumers divided.

This is the final evolution of corporate feminism: the boardroom-friendly, HR-vetted, DEI-certified shell of what once had teeth. The revolution was not only televised — it was sponsored, branded, and sold back to us at a markup.

The Branding of “Progress”

From International Women’s Day tweets to rainbow-flavored capitalism in June, corporations have learned to commodify virtue without giving up an ounce of power. You’ll see it in:

• A defense contractor tweeting about “women in STEM”
• A fast food chain celebrating “diverse leadership” while fighting union drives
• A ride-share app “amplifying voices” while gutting driver protections

Every PR department in America has a plug-and-play identity toolkit now. They know exactly how to deploy language like “empowerment,” “equity,” and “representation” to deflect criticism and deepen loyalty — all while continuing to exploit the labor and dignity of the very people they pretend to champion.

It’s not just feminism that got gutted. It’s the entire vocabulary of justice — co-opted, defanged, and turned into a smokescreen for class warfare.

Divide and Conquer — With Hashtags

Here’s the real kicker: this isn’t just about distraction. It’s about division.

Because as long as we’re busy fighting each other over gender, pronouns, or political labels — we’re not fighting them.

The corporate class has learned that identity politics, when stripped of material demands, becomes a perfect shield. They can promote a Black CEO while ignoring Black workers. They can highlight a Latina VP while outsourcing jobs from Latin America. They can brag about trans inclusion while lobbying against universal healthcare.

And if you dare call it out? You’re told you’re “erasing marginalized voices.” It’s genius — in the most cynical, soul-crushing way.

“We Love All Women… Who Help Us Make Money”

This is how capitalism manages to co-opt even the language of dissent.

Feminism becomes “Girlboss culture.” Black liberation becomes “supplier diversity.” Gay rights become a seasonal marketing campaign. Workers’ struggles are reframed as “resilience stories.” Pain is turned into branding. Structural inequality is reimagined as a personal growth arc.

And if you’re not invited to this branded, boardroom-friendly version of “progress”? That’s your fault. Try harder. Hustle more. Manifest. Grind. Lean in.

In this system, empowerment only exists if it serves the shareholder.

You can be anything you want — as long as you don’t ask why you’re still underpaid, overworked, and one bad day away from financial ruin.

Section VI: Paychecks, PowerPoints, and Pink-Washed Oppression

In the modern workplace, feminism has been reduced to an aesthetic — a color palette of pastel empowerment layered over grueling expectations, unpaid labor, and 80-hour grind weeks. The corporate world figured out how to take the language of liberation and turn it into a performance review metric.

They didn’t eliminate the glass ceiling. They just put a motivational quote on it.

The Rise of “Performative Inclusion”

Let’s start with the branding. Today’s HR departments don’t just manage benefits and disputes — they stage-manage the company’s feminist credentials. You’ll find:

• All-hands emails for Women’s History Month
• Office “Lean In Circles” moderated by middle managers
• Pink-splashed internal campaigns about “breaking boundaries” and “being your authentic self”

It’s feminism with all the danger removed — hollow, sanitized, and entirely on-brand. Companies don’t empower women so much as they market to them, selling professional aspiration like it’s a fragrance.

But here’s the truth:

Representation without power is decoration.

When a woman breaks into the C-suite, it’s held up as proof that the system works — even if the rest of the workforce is drowning in unpaid overtime, impossible standards, and whisper-network harassment. The real function of the “boss babe” archetype is to keep everyone believing that if you just try hard enough, you’ll make it too.

Never mind that the ladder is missing most of its rungs.

Exploitation in a Power Suit

We’ve traded the old-school patriarchy for something more insidious: a version that speaks the language of empowerment while still demanding more for less.

• Unpaid emotional labor is now called “team culture”
• Burnout is repackaged as “passion”
• Overwork is rewarded with branded tote bags and Instagrammable office perks

Instead of maternity leave, you get a branded onesie. Instead of a raise, you get a seat on the “Wellness Committee.” Instead of structural change, you get a podcast link and a Slack emoji reaction.

Modern corporate feminism asks you to embrace your power — while ignoring the fact that power is still hoarded at the top, mostly by men, and mostly behind closed doors.

And if you complain?

You’re not “leaning in.” You’re being “difficult.”

“Self-Care” As a Substitute for Justice

One of the darkest twists in this whole charade is how burnout, trauma, and workplace abuse have been rerouted into the language of personal responsibility.

If you’re exhausted, it’s because you didn’t set boundaries.

If you’re overwhelmed, you should try meditation.

If you’re underpaid, maybe it’s time to “know your worth.”

This isn’t feminism. This is gaslighting.

The corporate world has turned mental health and self-care into corporate liability shields, encouraging you to “breathe through it” while quietly making sure nothing changes. It’s a pink-washed version of rugged individualism — the idea that if you can’t survive the system, it’s your fault for being too soft.

But softness isn’t the problem.

Exploitation is.

And no amount of yoga, journaling, or branded mindfulness apps will change that.

Section VII: Intersectional Until It’s Inconvenient

Corporate feminism loves the aesthetics of inclusion. It will post a rainbow graphic during Pride Month. It will highlight a Black woman executive in a glossy brochure. It will throw out a hashtag or a campaign slogan like “Empower All Women” — until someone asks a real question about labor conditions, wage gaps, or who’s cleaning the office after hours.

Because make no mistake: corporate feminism is intersectional only when it’s profitable — and silent when it’s not.

The Faces They Show vs. The Hands They Hide

On LinkedIn and Instagram, you’ll see well-lit photos of diverse “women in leadership” panels. You’ll read captions about “breaking down barriers.” But the reality beneath the marketing gloss is much uglier:

• The janitorial staff is still overwhelmingly women of color — underpaid, outsourced, and invisible.
• The childcare workers enabling those white-collar careers? Underfunded, overworked, and treated as afterthoughts.
• The factory workers making the branded “feminist” merch? Often overseas, often exploited, and often excluded from the conversation entirely.

This is the two-faced nature of corporate inclusion. It celebrates visibility but resists equity. It puts a spotlight on the few who break through, while ignoring the structures that keep the many locked out.

Real feminism asks who benefits — not just who’s visible.

Class and Race Don’t Fit on a Tote Bag

The “girlboss” archetype, by design, assumes a baseline of privilege. It’s someone who can lean in, can work late, can hire help — and can afford to treat ambition as a personal project rather than a financial necessity.

But the reality for millions of women, especially women of color and working-class women, is that survival doesn’t leave room for self-optimization. There’s no wellness break when you’re working two jobs. No mentorship program when you’re stuck in retail or elder care. No Lean In Circle when your job doesn’t offer PTO.

And yet, the feminist discourse in corporate America keeps looping back to individual ambition instead of collective liberation. Why?

Because ambition is marketable. Liberation is threatening.

When a Black warehouse worker or a Latina hotel cleaner starts organizing for better wages or safer working conditions, she’s not invited to a panel. She’s written up. She’s fired. She’s buried in bureaucracy and NDAs.

That’s the intersection no one wants to talk about.

Feminism Can’t Be Franchise-Protected

Intersectionality was never supposed to be a buzzword. Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term to describe how systems of oppression overlap — not as a DEI talking point, but as a call to confront the full weight of injustice.

But in corporate hands, intersectionality becomes a checkbox, a quota, a branding tool. Something to be referenced but never acted upon.

And that’s by design. Because once you take intersectionality seriously — once you start asking questions like:

• Why are the lowest-paid jobs still disproportionately held by women of color?
• Why are workplace protections weakest in the industries women are most overrepresented in?
• Why does capitalism reward “diversity” at the top but punish organizing at the bottom?

…then you’re no longer just playing dress-up feminism. You’re demanding a revolution.

And the system doesn’t want that. It wants your smile for the brochure, your story for the LinkedIn post, and your silence when things get hard.

Section VIII: The Lie of Empowerment

For decades, the corporate machine has been selling women a dream dressed in empowerment. They called it choice. They called it ambition. They wrapped it in pink, gave it a logo, and told you that buying in was the same as breaking through. But here’s the ugly truth:

Empowerment, in the hands of capitalism, is just another way to sell you your own oppression with better lighting and worse margins.

Hustle Wrapped in Pink

The modern “empowered woman” is expected to be everything at once — CEO, mom, brand, activist, and aspirational Instagram presence. And every step of that exhausting journey is monetized. There’s a podcast for it. A coaching package. A speaking engagement. A merch drop.

It’s a performance of power, not power itself.

Real empowerment is collective, structural, and threatening to entrenched systems. But the kind that sells? That’s personalized. Sanitized. Branded.

• You’re not encouraged to fight for maternity leave. You’re encouraged to optimize your schedule.
• You’re not told to organize your workplace. You’re told to manifest abundance.
• You’re not pushed toward redistribution of power. You’re sold “abundance mindset” webinars that blame you for your burnout.

The boss babe, the hustle queen, the “you go girl” influencer — they’re not revolutionaries. They’re sales reps for the status quo.

From Liberation to Lifestyle Brand

The language of feminism has been stolen, rebranded, and turned into a lifestyle accessory. “Empowerment” is now a scented candle. It’s a coffee mug that says Nevertheless, She Persisted. It’s a curated TikTok routine of affirmations and hustle tips.

All of it engineered to keep you consuming, keep you smiling, and keep you quiet.

Because if you really woke up and realized how rigged this system is, you wouldn’t be buying empowerment. You’d be burning the whole machine to the ground.

But that doesn’t move units.

So instead, capitalism co-opts struggle, packages it, and sells it back to you with free shipping and a 10% off promo code. Corporate feminism doesn’t just ignore systemic inequality — it depends on it to make the branding work.

The Confidence Con

One of the most insidious lies peddled by corporate feminism is the idea that all women need to succeed is more confidence — as if underrepresentation in leadership, tech, or finance is the result of poor posture and not entrenched discrimination.

• Women don’t negotiate? Maybe they’ve learned it’s punished.
• Women don’t speak up in meetings? Maybe because they’re routinely interrupted or ignored.
• Women don’t take risks? Maybe because failure costs them more than it costs men.

The “confidence gap” myth shifts the blame from the system to the individual — and in doing so, it lets power off the hook. Instead of confronting discrimination, you get Lean In pep talks and LinkedIn posts about resilience.

Resilience is a beautiful thing. But when it’s used to excuse abuse, exploitation, and systemic failure, it’s not empowerment. It’s a trap.

You Don’t Need Empowerment — You Need Power

Let’s make this plain: empowerment is not power. Empowerment is a feeling, often fleeting, often conditional. Power is material. Power is structural. Power changes things.

And corporate feminism has no intention of giving women real power. Because if it did, it would mean:

• Cutting into executive compensation.
• Ceding control of supply chains.
• Paying domestic, care, and service workers what they’re actually worth.
• Regulating toxic work cultures.
• Giving up the myth that every woman can “make it” if she just tries hard enough.

That would be real feminism. And that would be very bad for business.

So instead, you get empowerment. The scented candle. The keynote speaker. The buzzword. The branding deal. The illusion.

Section IX: Feminism That Bites Back

If corporate feminism is a performance, then real feminism is a revolt.

It’s loud. It’s messy. It’s angry. It’s unbranded. And it doesn’t give a damn about your TED Talk. For all the pinkwashed platitudes and Lean In platters served up by the elite, the truth is this: real feminism scares the shit out of capitalism — because it threatens the very systems that keep inequality profitable.

Unionizing the Pink Collar Workforce

Start here: women make up the overwhelming majority of the pink collar economy — teachers, nurses, retail workers, care aides, domestic laborers. And while Sheryl Sandberg was giving speeches on stage, these women were out in the streets — striking, organizing, demanding more.

• The Red for Ed teacher strikes in Arizona, West Virginia, and Oklahoma? Led by women.
• The wave of unionization at Starbucks, REI, and Trader Joe’s? Driven largely by young women, often queer and of color.
• The ongoing fight for fair wages in nursing and elder care? Carried by women who don’t show up in LinkedIn thought-leader posts.

These aren’t “empowerment stories.” These are battles for survival.

And they don’t come with a brand deal or a book tour. They come with risks — job loss, blacklisting, retaliation. But they also come with power, real power: the power to say no.

Burn the Ladder

The truth is, we don’t need more women climbing the corporate ladder — we need more women setting it on fire.

The ladder was built to serve a narrow slice of the population — wealthy, well-connected, often white and male. And when women do claw their way to the top, they’re often forced to adopt the same exploitative logic that holds everyone else down. It’s not a glass ceiling they break — it’s a trapdoor they close behind them.

Feminism that bites back doesn’t beg for inclusion in a broken system. It builds alternatives.

• Worker co-ops.
• Mutual aid networks.
• Crowdfunded reproductive health care.
• Tenant unions and child care collectives.
• Radical journalism and digital organizing.

These aren’t side projects. They’re survival infrastructure in a collapsing society.

Intersectional or Nothing

Any feminism that isn’t intersectional isn’t feminism — it’s just rebranded white liberalism.

You cannot talk about women’s liberation without talking about:

• Race — because Black and Indigenous women face systemic violence and economic deprivation at levels corporate feminism refuses to touch.
• Class — because a Latina mother working three jobs isn’t asking for a promotion, she’s asking for a damn livable wage.
• Disability — because accessibility isn’t an afterthought, it’s a frontline.
• Queerness — because trans women are women, and their oppression is real, systemic, and often fatal.

The “boss babe” narrative is rooted in exclusion. Real feminism is rooted in solidarity — even when it’s uncomfortable, even when it’s complicated, even when it costs you.

Rage Is Rational

There’s a reason why every time women do fight back — through protest, strike, walkout, boycott — the reaction from media and politicians is one of shock or dismissal.

Because anger is dangerous when it’s organized.

Women are taught to be nice. To be quiet. To smile through it. So when we stop doing that — when we strike, when we riot, when we refuse — it terrifies those in power. And it should.

Rage is not a weakness. Rage is a tool. Rage is the spark that lights revolutions, not candles.

Section X: A Different Kind of Liberation

Let’s end where real movements begin: not with aspiration, but with action. Not with aesthetics, but with agency.

Because once you scrape away the influencer gloss and corporate fluff, what’s left isn’t some empty void. It’s a space — a messy, imperfect, radical space — where something new is being built. Slowly. Quietly. Fiercely.

This is where real feminism lives now.

The Exit Ramp

We don’t need more girlbosses. We need an exit ramp — away from the exploitative logic of capitalism and into something grounded in solidarity, care, and survival.

The women who are truly building this future? They’re not selling skincare or running DEI seminars. They’re:

• Launching mutual aid funds on Instagram DMs and Signal threads.
• Coordinating abortion pill deliveries through encrypted apps.
• Starting free community fridges, child care swaps, and neighborhood bail funds.
• Running harm reduction collectives in places where fentanyl has done what the banks and the bosses couldn’t — flatten entire towns.

It’s not glamorous. It’s not televised. It sure as hell doesn’t trend on LinkedIn.

But it’s real.

It’s slow. It’s hard. It’s vulnerable. And that’s exactly why it works — because it’s rooted in people, not profits.

Collective Joy Is a Radical Act

You want something capitalism can’t sell back to you? Try this: joy that isn’t bought.

• Joy that comes from watching your neighbor’s kid so she can go to class.
• Joy that comes from feeding twenty people with donated rice and beans.
• Joy that comes from watching a scab turn around on the picket line and join the strike.

That joy? It doesn’t go viral. It doesn’t monetize. It doesn’t need to.

It sustains people in a system that was never designed for us to survive, let alone thrive.

The idea that liberation looks like solitary success — a corner office, a blue check, a speaking gig — was always a lie. Real liberation is shared. It’s built. It’s messy and slow and full of false starts. But it’s ours.

What Comes After “Lean In”

Here’s what comes next — or what could, if we let it:

• We stop climbing ladders and start building bridges.
• We stop idolizing bosses and start listening to organizers.
• We stop chasing representation and start demanding redistribution.
• We stop trying to be exceptional women in a broken world and start being dangerous women who remake it.

Because the future isn’t female — not if the “female” in question is just another boot on someone’s neck.

The future is collective.

The future is radical.

The future is feminist — not because it flatters power, but because it fights it.

That was always the point.

Not Lean In.

But Burn Down.