Is sisterhood sacred or soul-crushing?

Within the feminist movement, the answer is less clear than one might hope. Trashing each other and exclusion have been hallmarks since the movement began, and each generation of feminist activists seems to suffer the same in-fighting. But contrary to simplistic ideas about catty, back-stabbing women, feminists don't fight each other because women are uniquely competitive or cruel. Though we care about the movement, it happens because we've internalized a narrative of scarcity: we act as though we're fighting for crumbs.

In her recent New Yorker article about the life of the feminist pioneer Shulamith Firestone, Susan Faludi details how the Women's Liberation Movement of the 1960s and 70s fractured. She quotes a line from Ti-Grace Atkinson's resignation from a New York feminist group:

Sisterhood is powerful. It kills. Mostly sisters.

It seems that no one walked away unscathed, and today, little has changed. Online feminism faces many of the same challenges our foremothers faced: not enough support, too much attention for the dominant groups, vicious internal attacks, and bitter frustration and disillusionment. The same dynamics of "trashing" that Jo Freeman wrote about in 1976 are alive today. Trashing, she says, is not about opposition or critique:

"It is not done to expose disagreements or resolve differences. It is done to disparage and destroy."

That dynamic is, of course, not unique to feminism. Is there any social movement that hasn't had splits, arguments and active dissent?

Disagreement that escalates into attacks should be expected on the left, where we value dissent and diverse opinions. The right, too, sees its fair share of in-fighting, but – being conservative – it can be somewhat insulated from it by a resistance to change and a cultural deference to authority. Progressive movements lend themselves more readily to discord – which, in the big picture, is a good thing.

Identity-based movements may be particularly susceptible, precisely because of our personal investment in them. Feminism isn't just a general ideology for making the world a better place: it's a very specific ideology of liberation for the actors of the movement. It is personal by definition. Challenges to the movement, or the sense that other women are somehow doing feminism wrong, can feel like personal affronts. For feminists, your work often feels like a reflection of who you are, and the critiques even more so.

That passion and deep concern for a social movement are strengths. But women make up half the world – of course, our ideas vary wildly about what a representative movement should be. And while nearly all of us have good intentions, intentions don't make perfect outcomes. Feminist movements have, too many times, perpetuated existing hierarchies and certain bigotries – often lifting the experiences of the most powerful (usually upper middle-class, straight, white American women) while steamrolling the perspectives of the many women who don't fit that mold.

In a more perfect world – or at least, a more perfect movement – we could have a variety of feminisms, each serving a variety of women, and all recognizing the fact that "woman", as a category, encompasses all sorts of different human beings with different needs. We wouldn't need to draw exact lines around who is or isn't an acceptable feminist. "Feminism" would be big-tent: so long as you work to promote social, political and economic gender equality, you're in.

No one would be expected to speak for all of womankind. Sheryl Sandberg could write a book about gender in the business world without facing attacks from other feminists, criticizing her for having a nanny, for talking to male CEOs more than female domestic laborers, or for not representing working-class women – the takeaway being that Sandberg isn't enough of a caretaker, and therefore not sufficiently feminine. And in a more perfect world (or movement), a feminist book written by a female domestic laborer would get as much traction as one penned by the COO of Facebook.

The solution to those imperfections, though, is not to attack the women who do succeed or stand out. That only creates a movement of knee-jerk critics, who, when presented with a piece of feminist work, engage the "find what's wrong with it" mode.

And there's the problem of scarcity. Feminist work is rarely paid, and when feminist writers and activists are compensated, it's not usually with much. In their new FemFuture report about online feminism (pdf), bloggers and activists Courtney Martin and Vanessa Valenti detail what they call a "psychology of deprivation":

"[It is] a sense that their work will never be rewarded as it deserves to be, that they are in direct competition with one another for the scraps that come from third-party ad companies or other inadequate attempts to bring in revenue. As a result, they are vulnerable, less effective, and risk burn out. Under these conditions, online feminism isn't being sufficiently linked to larger organizational and movement efforts and/or leveraged for the greatest impact at this critical moment."

As such, feminists routinely see their work immediately picked apart by other feminists. Much like the trashing Jo Freeman and Susan Faludi detail, inter-feminist discourse often dips into character assassination. But there's also personal attack masquerading as critique, and it's nearly impossible to draw a line separating the two (although Ann Friedman does a good job with this handy chart).

Thoughtful criticism meant to improve a project is a good thing. The explicit intent of finding fault in a work is not. Going a step further, and suggesting that a project's flaws and gaps reflect the motives of its creators – they're corporate sellouts, don't care about X group of women, just want to promote themselves – is what kneecaps activism. Why act at all if the social norm in your group is to chew up and spit out every new idea?

Unsurprisingly, the FemFuture report was met with the usual criticism-for-criticism's-sake – but also, thankfully, some thoughtful and cogent suggestions for improvement. Within the feminist blogosphere, though, a paper meant to make our work more sustainable was only lightly promoted. There was little recognition of its many strengths, and even fewer pledges to help make sustainable online feminism real. It's not because supporters don't exist. It's because many of us were scared to wade into a sudden conflict. We didn't want to be perceived as insufficiently critical, sellouts, or too aggressive. You know, not sufficiently accommodating. Too ambitious. Not sufficiently feminine.

That has real consequences. I have spoken to countless women who have ideas for books, blogs, campaigns or other projects, but are terrified to carry them out, lest they make a misstep and be branded a bad feminist, unworthy of support. They'd rather keep their heads down than put out new ideas. Better to join the chorus of critics, and position oneself as a "good" feminist, in opposition to those other, "bad" feminists.

That's not the sign of a healthy movement, but it is how one earns credibility in online feminist circles today – nothing looks better than pointing out how everyone else is doing it wrong. Bonus points if those other feminists have had a modicum of success, like a book, a highly-trafficked website, or getting paid for their work.

But it's not because we're catty or mean or somehow predisposed to cliquishness and competition. It's because we're starving.

Which is why I hope, despite the initial pushback, that the many suggestions for online activism presented in the FemFuture report materialize. I hope that the report is only one small piece of an enormous global movement of women, online and off, taking a look at their own communities and asking: "What do we need here? How can we make our work sustainable?"

There isn't a set pie of feminist support, attention, money and influence. The more wide-reaching our movement is, the more opportunities there will be for everyone in it. Most of us never chose feminism as a career choice; most feminists earn their salary in other ways. Even those of us who are paid for feminist work aren't exactly in it for the big bucks. But we all need some sort of support, whether it's financial, emotional, structural or something else. And too few of us receive it.

It's time we learned lessons that are now decades old, and have been faced by many other political movements. Feminism must be more genuinely egalitarian and representative. We need to understand that womanhood means very different things to the billions of different women on this planet. We must work against perpetuating the same inequalities we fight against.

And we need to do that not in competition with each other, but with the shared goal of improving the movement and world. We need to do it with the recognition that no perspective or solution will be universal, and no single woman will be anywhere near a perfect feminist.

Then, we can stop fighting for scraps, and instead, work on making a feast.