Feminist spaces are not toxic. Feminism is not toxic. Accountability is not toxic.
So, what is?
This began as my rage, but now it is my love letter to the movement.
A call to do better. To be better. To build spaces worthy of the feminism we claim.
This piece is born from my rage. From the nights I spent questioning whether I was too sensitive, too difficult, too much. From the moments I swallowed my truth because speaking it would cost me opportunities, contracts, references, relationships, or my place in the movement. From the realization that I was being asked to trade my voice for access, my dignity for opportunity, my growth for loyalty and the truth is… I am done trading.
I know I am not alone. This is not just my story. It is the story of countless women, feminists, workers, and young people who have been asked to choose between their voice and their livelihood, between their dignity and their place in the room.
Maybe you know this feeling. The tightness in your chest before a meeting. The way you edit yourself mid-sentence. The calculations you make: If I say this, will I lose that contract? That reference? That place at the table?
What is toxic is expecting people to be silent because they were “given an opportunity,” as though a job, contract, platform, or salary bought permanent ownership of their voice. What is toxic is calling people ungrateful, difficult, arrogant, or “not humble” because they refuse to shrink themselves to make others comfortable. Humility is not silence. Gratitude is not obedience. Respect is not submission.
Maybe you have been told to fly but only within certain limits. Only as high as someone else is comfortable with. Only as far as someone else can control.
What is toxic is encouraging people to fly, but only if they do not fly too high, too far, too visibly, or beyond control. It is celebrating potential when it serves an image, then resenting growth when it reminds those in power that no one was ever theirs to own. You may have opened a door, but they walked through it. You may have offered an opportunity, but they brought the labour, talent, courage, ideas, and commitment.
None of us are self-made. We are made by community, by people who loved us, taught us, challenged us, believed in us, opened doors, and held us when we needed it.
But we also showed up. We did the work. We learned, took risks, survived uncertainty, and chose growth even when it meant leaving spaces that wanted us to doubt ourselves. You may have witnessed part of our journey, but you do not get to rewrite our story as though you made us.
Let us speak plainly about the people who “hold the keys to the city”. The keys to opportunities, the keys to funding, the keys to visibility, to platforms, to convenings, to donor rooms, to decision-making tables, the keys to who gets hired, who gets promoted, who gets credited, who gets erased. Holding the keys is not itself the problem. The problem is when those keys are used to gatekeep, to exclude, to concentrate power, and to decide who belongs and who is erased. That misuse of power, wielding exclusionary authority as if it were neutral administration—is anti-feminist.
Paying homage is deeply feminist, and I will acknowledge people who have labored for the movement for years. They have given decades of their lives, their energy, their health, their relationships, their peace. They have stood on frontlines, organized communities, written proposals, managed crises, mentored young feminists, and carried burdens no one else could see.
ON YOUR SHOULDERS WE STAND. WE ARE GRATEFUL. WE HONOR YOU.
But gratitude does not mean silence. Honor does not mean immunity and laboring for the movement does not place anyone above reproach.
Feminism was born out of questioning. It was born of women and gender-diverse people looking at what the world called “normal” and saying: this is not right. This is not just. This must change.
Feminism questioned marriage laws that treated women as property. It questioned workplace policies that excluded women. It questioned medical systems that silenced women’s pain. It questioned political structures that erased women’s voices. It questioned religious doctrines that justified women’s subordination. It questioned cultural practices that normalized violence against women.
Feminism itself is a practice of critical interrogation. It is a refusal to accept the world as it is. It is a commitment to imagining and building something better.
So how dare we now recreate the very systems we claim to oppose?
How dare we build spaces, feminist or otherwise, where questioning is prohibited and punished? Where accountability is treated as betrayal? Where silence is demanded in the name of loyalty? Where people are expected to labour endlessly without fair pay, without rest, without recourse? Where the same dynamics of fear, control, and impunity that feminism was born to challenge are reproduced behind closed doors with feminist language?
It is simply unacceptable.
We cannot re-enact the same systems of silence because we are afraid to hold people to account. We cannot self-sabotage our own liberation because we fear speaking truth to power within our own movements.
If we are truly feminist, we must be willing to question not only the world, but ourselves. Not only institutions outside, but the ones we have built. Not only leaders in other sectors, but the founders, directors, and senior activists within our own spaces.
Questioning is not betrayal. It is fidelity to feminism itself. Accountability is not attack. It is love in action.
Feminism cannot be liberation in public and oppression in private.
We cannot demand accountability from governments, corporations, and communities while refusing to practice it in our own organizations. The work is not to protect egos, founders, or institutional reputations. The work is to protect people.
Remember: this is a call to do better, to be better, to build spaces worthy of the feminism we claim. Power exists everywhere; in our movements, our homes, our donor relationships, our governments, our communities. The task before us is to dream, imagine, and bring into reality ways of exercising this power that retain feminist goals: shared leadership, transparent decision-making, community-led oversight, and clear consequences for abuse. We must build working structures both within and between movements to make feminist accountability not stay mere talk. It must be practised, upheld, and lived every day, in every space, by every one of us
With love, rage, and unwavering hope,
Terry
Terry Owino is a movement builder, writer, and co-convener of the Coalition of Young Women for Climate Justice. Her work centres reimagining organizational development and systems through a deeply feminist lens, drawing from her own lived experiences to challenge what we have normalised. She is also a proud plant mom.