My Feminism Is Not Soft

At 2 a.m., a red badge in Slack doesn’t just feel like a notification—it feels like another reminder thatour attention is always up for grabs. We experience this extraction in invisible ways: the unpaid care that sustains our homes, the“always-on” pings that fracture our focus, the buried checkbox that pretends to be genuine consent.

Over the pastmonths, I’ve shared with you many of these extractions:

• How default settings pull our attention to maximizeengagement (Accept All / Reject All).
• Howemotional labor—checking in on a colleague after a tough week or smoothing over a family conflict—holds teams andhouseholds together even though it never appears on a spreadsheet (Perverse Stability vs. Authentic Peace, Flexible Reciprocity).
• How “consent” often hides behind a small “Cancel”link, rendering it performative unless we intentionally keep it alive (DefiningConsent).
• How original contributions vanish until someone with authority repeats them, erasing attribution(Emergence Is an Excuse).
• Howinstitutional neglect stays invisible until a counter-archive of “vanished requests” forces accountability (Nobody Is Too Expensive).
• And how these hidden costsaccumulate most heavily for those already marginalized (Collapse Capitalism, Temporal Justice).

None of these are minor glitches. They are structural choices that shape how we live and work. Simply callingfor “more inclusion” or “better empathy” doesn’t address the point where power actually hides.

That’s why my feminism isn’t meant to be“soft.” It’s designed to be practical, precise, and systemic.

Here’s what it lookslike in practice:

1. Budgeting care as a resource. Treat emotional labor and meetingfacilitation as line items—no more assuming someone will “just take care of it.” When we plan a release or acommunity meeting, we explicitly account for who will handle the follow-ups, who will check in with people, and how we’ll sharethat work. That level of clarity prevents burnout from slipping into “invisible labor.”
2. Reversingdefault notifications. Instead of auto-subscribe or “opt-in analytics,” we start with “mute bydefault,” requiring each individual to proactively choose which updates matter. This shift respects attention as finite andpushes platforms to justify why they need our focus in the first place.
3. **Embedding genuine opt-outs.**Every interface—whether a household chore chart or a project management tool—should include a visible, shame-free way tostep back. No more “Cancel” links hidden behind three layers of UI. If opting out is easy and straightforward, consentstays real rather than a checkbox we click and forget.
4. Crediting original voices. Whenever an insightor suggestion is repeated, the originator gets named. This simple practice helps maintain a culture where ideas circulate withouterasing their source, ensuring that expertise doesn’t depend solely on job title or seniority.
5. Turningprivate logs into public leverage. If a request—whether for maintenance, policy change, or emotionalsupport—goes unanswered, it’s recorded in a shared space. That visibility makes it harder for organizations to pretendthey didn’t know, shifting accountability from “I didn’t realize” to “Here’s what wemissed.”

These strategies do more than “feel good.”

They change the architecture of howdecisions are made and whose well-being counts.

They ask every stakeholder two fundamental questions:

• Who benefits?
• Who pays the hidden cost?

And instead of treating careand consent as side effects, they become baseline metrics—alongside performance targets, sales goals, or quarterlydeliverables.

Share

Feminism can’t just be a collection of affirmations or “bestpractices.” It needs to be the structural framework that undergirds our policies, our interfaces, our norms. When we makerefusal legible, when we budget care, when we insist on ongoing consent, we chip away at the silent engines that have operated fortoo long without scrutiny.

At its core, this feminism is a refusal of extraction as default. It doesn’t demandperfection; it demands change in the infrastructure.

Each time we pause before clicking “Agree,” each time we say“no” without apology, each time we make unseen work visible—we strengthen the systems that protect mutual respectand shared responsibility.

Feminism is anything but soft. It’s precisely thekind of structural insistence we need to insist that care, attention, and consent are never afterthoughts. It’s the steelframework that holds up a different way of living and working, one where well-being matters as much as productivity—and wheresaying “no” can be as powerful as saying “yes.”

Further Reading

• Accept All / Reject All – on Attention & Defaults
• Perverse Stability vs. Authentic Peace and Flexible Reciprocity – on Emotional Labor
• Defining Consent – on Ongoing Consent
• Emergence Is an Excuse – on Voice & Credit
• Nobody Is Too Expensive – on Counter-Archivals
• Collapse Capitalism and Temporal Justice – on Intersectional Extraction