As a ‘young’ woman myself (not to get into societies idea of what classes as a ‘young’ woman or how our worth is completely built on if we still look ‘young’ or we will be here all fucking year. I’m 33, I don’t get up in the night to pee and my tits are still above my belly button – i’m young alright?), i’m very interested in the narrative that is slowly coming to boil in the establishment titled ‘The radicalisation of young women’ to the left. I am not talking about the right supporting ‘trad wife’, anti feminist movements as i will save that for another day- or you can check out this great piece in Dazed on it.

If history teaches us anything (and it doesn’t seem to right now does it??) it’s that we, as a species, have a real short memory so lets have a quick little history lesson to kick off shall we?

Coming in hot with our OG lasses the Suffragettes – since most of us study them in school you should know the back story here. Emily Davison and the Pankhursts are the most known. Emily threw herself in front of the kings horse in protest and Emmeline Pankhurst coined the terms ‘deeds not words’ so the were definitely doers when it came to women’s suffrage. We also have Annie Kenney who was arrested 13 times through her life in relation to the womens sufferage movement. They chained themselves to railing, got in scraps with coppers, and went on hunger strike amongst other things. I bet if you asked the coppers of the day they would have said those women are fucking crazy and a pain in the arse. Today they are considered some of the most influential women in history, there are awards in their names, films, statues and much more.

Now lets look at Rosa Parks (continuing with the big hitters), again, you probably studied her in school along with the civil rights movement. She refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Alabama. Today, we would consider this a quite protest but look at any film depiction of this or historical retelling and you know at the time this was a ballsy, brave and fucking radical move. She was arrested. This was the trigger of a huge boycott that would shape history. And i bet you at the time people thought she was fucking crazy and a pain in the arse.

And onto a modern day babe Malala Yousafzai, again we should all know who she is. Seeking an education in Afghanistan and via her blog drawing global attention to the difficulty of doing so as a young woman, she was shot alongside 2 classmates in the head by the Taliban. And what do you recon some people were saying when she was speaking out about just wanting an education? i’d bet my pension it was something like she’s fucking crazy and a pain in the arse. A young girl caring and wanting an education in Afghanistan and the attention she was drawing to the cause was so radical that it caused her to be shot in the actual head. Just let that sit with you for a minute.

I could go on and on about all the ‘radical’ women that have shaped history for the better but you can easily look them up yourself.

Now to my point. The media, and I’m going to reference just the one article here because i don’t need to name 5 sources to prove a point, have begun circulating a narrative that this radicalisation of women to ‘the left’ is a new thing. Not just a new thing, but a new scary thing akin to the radicalisation of young men to the far right (its not just young men guys) that has us all aboard a terrifying train heading to a complete collapse of our society as we know it. So, I’m just gonna poke a few holes in this narrative for you to see if you think it’ll still stand up. So firstly, Claire Lehmann – as author of this piece for The Dispatch, as i believe i have proven, the ‘radicalisation of young women’ aint new babe.

Claire tells us that “we find it easy to recognize radicalization when it happens in young men, while romanticizing or ignoring the same phenomenon in women.” The romanticizing she references is in relation to people like Greta Thunberg the climate activist receiving praise and awards etc for her work and how this wouldn’t be the same if she were Gus Thunberg. I think again here i can stick my finger in this premise and create a hole pretty easily in the rarity it is to have a young female being listened to for what is in their brain at all in todays world, so if she could list more than just Greta for this one i might change my mind. Shes the exception not the rule.

One more hole to sink the flimsy shit – i mean ship that is this narrative? go on then – “Women rarely engage in political assassinations or mass shootings, the way a small subset of fanatical men do. But the blocking of infrastructure and the vandalism of cultural property inflict a real toll—on the public”…The history lesson comes in handy here again doesn’t it because the ‘toll on the public’ does have the echo of suffragette about it semantically speaking, and I’m sorry but mass shootings v a bit of vandalism is not the same flavour of radical in anyone’s book. Women are labelled as fucking crazy and a pain in the arse because through out history, women have had to scream in order to be heard, they have had to cause a scene or refuse to move and that can make some people uncomfy but has largely left most people unharmed.

With hindsight we have collectively looked back at The suffrage movement, at Rosa and Malala and said ‘yeah, maybe they weren’t so fucking crazy’. The causes they were fighting for, we decided, were objectively right and good and for the betterment of real human lives. The causes left leaning women are supporting these days are largely the same. Think climate change, black lives matter and f f f feminism to name a few. Women are becoming more engaged. Statistically that is accurate and obvious but to say this is lefty ‘radicalisation’ or ‘extremism’ does us a disservice.

Extremism, as defined by the Home Office, involves opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs. The 2024 definition of extremism emphasizes ideologies based on violence, hatred, or intolerance.

Show me the hatred, the violence and the intolerance that these radicalised women are the instigators of. Please.

Women have always been there. They have always been catalysts of change. If you look at the young women in your life and listen to them talk about their lived experience, of instances of inequality or seeing their friends experience racism, sexism, the rolling back of their rights or their sisters rights or their children’s or mothers rights what you see wont be hatred. It will be rage. Rage that runs down the years from their foremothers. And people aren’t used to the visibility of women’s rage, it is much less palatable than men’s rage. And when women rage, in my experience, with the alchemy of woman hood they don’t turn it to hate. They turn it to love. They don’t tend to protest to roll back the rights of white people to show how black lives matter, they don’t want to control men’s reproductive rights, or limit male freedom to enable women to progress off standing on their backs. They work together, they mobilise, they ally and they give a fuck about people other than themselves. That is and always has been why young women are fucking radical.