Call Me Noah, I’m Gathering the Marginalised

The future isn’t female, it’s intersectional or nothing.

“They said a flood’s coming,” he told me, holding a clipboard and a conscience scrubbed clean. “We’ve got space for maybe twenty. We’re prioritising women, obviously.”

He meant a certain kind of woman. The digestible kind. The kind you’d invite to a panel. White, straight, cis, educated. She wears linen, says the right things, cries at the news but never too loudly. She’s a woman who fits. Doesn’t scare the donors. Doesn’t ruin the photo.

“No,” I said. “We’re not saving the usual. We’re also saving the ones already drowning.”

He looked confused. Said something about logistics. Said we need survivors, not burdens. I looked him in the eye and thought of all the women who never even got offered a seat in the lifeboat. The girl in a detention centre praying in a language you don’t bother to translate. The Black trans sex worker bleeding in an alley while your feminism posts solidarity from a cocktail bar. The fat disabled teenager being force-fed body positivity while starving for actual access. The neurodivergent woman who couldn’t network her way to safety. The undocumented cleaner locked in your hotel’s basement during a hurricane. The ones no one thinks to save.

This ark is not for optics. It is not for comfort. It is not for the curated. I am not collecting the women who smile best on camera. I am collecting the women no one thinks to ask for. The ones you ignore until they’re useful. The ones you crop out of your campaigns. The ones you push to the back, then blame for being invisible. You can call me Noah if it helps you sleep. But make no mistake. This is not salvation. This is retribution.

White feminism didn’t just ignore the warnings. It threw a brunch party on the roof while the water rose. It made affirmation boards about resilience while the rest of us were reinforcing doors and learning how to swim with trauma lodged in our lungs. They called it empowerment. It was insulation.

They mistook their proximity to safety for progress. They called their privilege a platform and then wondered why no one else could climb. They talked about reclaiming their voices while standing on the backs of women who were never allowed to speak. Politics became a vision board. Liberation became a look. And the rest of us? We were already ankle-deep. Not in metaphor. In consequence.

Who white feminism left behind, and exactly how:

• Belly Mujinga. A Black British rail worker who was spat on by a man claiming to have COVID. She later died. No charges were filed. White feminism held candlelit vigils for Ruth Bader Ginsburg but barely whispered Belly’s name.

• Marsha P. Johnson. A Black trans woman who risked everything at Stonewall. Her legacy was whitewashed, commodified, and cropped out of pride floats designed by corporations with transphobic donation histories.

• Disabled women like Anne Wafula Strike. A Paralympian who publicly spoke out about being denied access to a working toilet on a train. White feminism responded with silence, then went back to tweeting about "strong women" and spin class.

• The Grenfell women. Working-class, many Muslim, many migrants. Forgotten before the fire was even out. Feminism said nothing while these women screamed into housing complaints for years. Their deaths were preventable. Their lives were politicised only after they became hashtags.

• Sex workers like Gabriella Garcia. A migrant trans woman murdered in Miami, still misgendered in the press. Feminist organisations barely blinked. If your feminism requires a dress code and a LinkedIn account, it’s simply not feminism. It’s a cult of respectability.

• Black mothers like Sybrina Fulton. Mother of Trayvon Martin. She campaigned for justice while white feminist platforms fell over themselves to publish essays about Lean In. Grief as a career. Rage as a footnote.

• Fat women like Stephanie Yeboah. Harassed and vilified for simply existing in a visible body. Invited to diversity campaigns, then ignored when she asked for actual systemic change. Her body was celebrated until her voice became inconvenient.

• Detainees like Nasrin Sotoudeh. An Iranian human rights lawyer imprisoned for defending women who removed their hijabs. Western feminists celebrated her bravery but rarely showed up for her release. They wanted the symbol, not the struggle.

• Migrant cleaners during COVID. Women who cleaned the offices of “feminist entrepreneurs” and influencers. Left without PPE. No hazard pay. No headlines. No tweets. Dying anonymously while their employers posted “in this together.”

• The survivors Larry Nassar abused. Girls who spoke out against a predator protected by institutions. Many were young women of colour. Feminism screamed about Harvey Weinstein but mumbled about this. The gymnasts got gold medals. He got decades. And still, there’s no collective reckoning.

• Queer disabled writers like Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. Carving language for survival while white feminism still acts like inclusion is charity. Their work is cited. Their names are forgotten.

• Women like Shamima Begum. Reviled in public. Stripped of citizenship. A child when she left. A woman when they tried to silence her forever. She’s a feminist issue, whether you like her or not. The line between victim and villain is drawn with white hands.

• Trans youth like Brianna Ghey. Murdered at 16. Her death sparked protests. But where was feminism before that? Where were the marches, the shelters, the safety nets? Trans girls are not collateral damage for your politics. They are not negotiable.

• Factory workers in Bangladesh. Mostly women. Making your "feminist" slogan tees for £3.20 a day in unsafe buildings that collapse without warning. Rana Plaza killed 1,134 of them. And the brands still got louder. Just not about that.

• Palestinian women like Shireen Abu Akleh. Veteran journalist. Shot by Israeli forces. Killed while reporting. White feminism had a thousand thinkpieces for Taylor Swift’s feminism but couldn’t seem to find the time to say her name.

• Women like Claudia Jones. A Black Marxist feminist who was deported from the US, founded The West Indian Gazette, and built the foundation for Notting Hill Carnival. Erased from feminist history because she didn’t come wrapped in a palatable aesthetics.

• Young girls like Banaz Mahmod. A Kurdish-British woman murdered in an “honour killing” after police ignored her repeated pleas for help. White feminism calls for justice but doesn’t show up to courtrooms when the names are too hard to pronounce.

The ark is not a metaphor. It’s a survival architecture built by the bruised. And we are naming who’s coming aboard. Black trans girls with chipped nail polish and full notebooks. Queer migrants with no passport but enough strategy to outlive a continent. Chronically ill femmes who feel the flood hours before the clouds change colour. Neurodivergent women who bring maps the rest of us can’t read but will one day need.

These aren’t cautionary tales. These are architects of the new world. They arrive with nothing but memory and medicine, and still offer you a seat before taking one. Don’t mistake them for tragic. These are not sob stories. These are schematics. Blueprints for a world that wasn’t built for them, and will collapse without them.

Then come the ones who never brought wood, never lifted a hammer, never checked the tide — just showed up in the rain with a quote and a ring light. The influencers. The soft-spoken panelists. The feminist founders with logistics but no community. Suddenly remembering the marginalised exist now that the flood has reached their doorstep.

They’re reciting Audre Lorde out loud like it's a magic spell. They’re wet, confused, and asking if there’s WiFi. They’re shocked you won’t centre their fear. But you’ve been afraid. You’ve just been busy. Busy naming the storm. Busy building something that floats. And now they want your boat without ever having held your weight.

“Do not confuse my anger with chaos. It is structure. It is shelter. It is the roof you ran to when yours collapsed.”

This was never about being pure. Or perfect. Or polished enough to be retweeted. It’s about truth. The kind you carry in your bones when no one’s looking. No one on this ark came clean. They came tired. They came scared. They came covered in mud and memory, holding pieces of a life that never fit the world they were handed. But they came. They didn’t ask for inclusion. They demanded space. They brought buckets, not bios. They didn’t sit on panels, they sat with pain. This isn’t feminism in soft light. This is survival in flood water. And sometimes it leaks. And sometimes it smells. And sometimes it looks nothing like progress. But it holds. It holds.

And the ones you left out? They are writing now. Their own flood myths. Their own survival songs. The girls you once ignored are printing scriptures on wet cardboard and reading them aloud to whoever will stay. They’re building rafts from trauma and joy and whatever didn’t burn. They are steering the damn boat with hands that were never meant to lead. No permission. No applause. Just direction. They are not waiting for you to save them. They are not interested in your maps. They are rowing.

You are not Noah. But look at you. Blistered hands. Voice frayed. Carrying more than just yourself. You are building something that floats. Not a metaphor. Not a moodboard. Not a campaign. A vessel. Where the excluded don’t just survive. They lead. And they are waiting for you.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m a strong intersectional and radical feminist. That’s not a title I wear for aesthetic, it’s a commitment, and it comes with questions. Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of feminist writing and found myself disturbed. Not because the words weren’t clever, or well-intentioned, but because so many of them were quietly, devastatingly exclusive. Written by white feminists, for white feminists, with no thought for the women whose lives sit beyond the mirror. Pieces that forget power feels different in a hijab. That healing looks different without healthcare. That womanhood isn't always cis, or soft, or English-speaking.

This isn’t my usual style. I’m experimenting. I wrote this more like a story… but the flood is real. Moving forward, we have to ask: who are we leaving behind in our ‘own’ feminism? When we write, when we speak, when we choose our references, our heroes, our hashtags. Feminism that centres only the familiar isn’t feminism. It is not enough to mean well. If your feminism cannot stretch across race, religion, class, disability, migration, and every axis of violence — then it’s not a movement. It’s a mirror. And it only reflects one face.

The next wave of feminism cannot just be louder. It must be wider. It must account for every cog in this patriarchal, capitalist, carceral machine. And it must start with the women still drowning.

Let’s go find them. Let’s build the boat again. Properly, this time.