Imagine this: A world where the quality of your life is not determined by how much money you have. You do not have to sell your labour to survive. Labour is not tied to capitalism, profit or wage. Borders do not exist, we are free to move without consequence. The nuclear family does not exist, children are raised collectively, reproduction takes on new meanings. In this world, work in the home is valued, shared and no is woman forced to rely on their partner to survive. The principles of transformative justice are used to rectify harm. Critical and comprehensive sex education exists for all from an early age. We are liberated from the gender binary’s strangling grip and the demands it places on our bodies. Survival sex work does not exist. Education and transport are free, from cradle to grave. We are forced to reckon with and rectify histories of imperialism collectively. We have freedom to, not just freedom from. Specialist mental health services and community care are integral to our societies. There is no ‘state’ as we know it, nobody dies in “suspicious circumstances” at its hands; no person has to navigate sexism, racism, disabilism or queerphobia to survive. Detention centres do not exist. Prisons do not exist, nor do the police. The military and their weapons across nations are disbanded. Resources are reorganised to adequately address climate catastrophe. No person is without a home or loving community. We love one another, without possession or exploitation or extraction. We all have enough to eat, well. We all have to means and the environment to make art, if we so wish. All cultural gatekeepers are destroyed.
Now imagine this vision not as utopian, but as something well within our reach.
Now imagine this vision not as utopian, but as something well within our reach.
The vision I have presented has its limitations - there are gaps, contradictions, things that have been omitted, but without the capacity to imagine in this way, feminism is purposeless. Let us fight over a vision because our demands must spring from somewhere. This is the task handed down to us and we must approach it with the urgency it demands. We must rise to challenge with a revolutionary and collective sense of hope; knowing that if we do not see this world, someone else will.