This week, I couldn’t stop reading discourse that pitted the so-called past failures of “millennial feminism” against the so-called current failures of “Gen Z feminism.” Now, keep in mind, this conversation is happening at a time when the feminist movement in the U.S. has been seemingly kneecapped by backlash to #MeToo, which preceded the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the presidential re-election of sexual abuser Donald Trump, and the release of the Epstein Files that revealed decades of (and ongoing) federal government inaction against one of the most prolific, wealthy, and powerful sex traffickers of women and girls of all time. And led by these men and their sympathizers, the U.S. government is simultaneously using its power to mass murder women and girls in the Global South.

But where this discourse actually started was with the writer Lindy West, whose recent memoir Adult Braces and interviews about her polyamorous marriage kicked off over a month of frenzied online chatter and subsequent controversies. First of all, this alone proves West still has the juice, because it’s almost impossible to get people to talk about anything online for a month straight anymore.

It also resulted in Helen Lewis writing a classic anti-feminist screed for The Atlantic last week about how feminists are unreliable narrators of their own lives (she should have no problem with me calling her a TERF, then) called “The Death of Millennial Feminism.” Sorry Helen, but I think a lot of 30-to-45-year-old feminists are still alive!

Nonetheless, “millennial feminism” discourse, much of it in the style of Lewis’ very same tired and flawed arguments, broke out across the internet. In this milieu, the broader picture of women’s rights and activism has been lost, reduced to people shouting past each other about what they remember Tumblr being like over a decade ago. And I don’t think this kind of unproductive, rage-baiting discourse is fully accidental—it’s another product of a social environment built by the broligarchy, the same group of men behind much of the state-sanctioned violence that threatens women and girls around the world today.

(The rest of this piece is for Spitfire News members only, but I’m currently offering a 50% off bundle deal with Marisa Kabas and Katelyn Burns!)