Vaginal steaming is a mixed bag, as health pursuits go. I’ve never tried it and there isn’t much peer-reviewed literature on the matter – but from what I know of the debate, Gwyneth Paltrow is in one corner, singing its praises for hormonal balance, and all of gynaecology is in the other, saying this is a stupid thing to do, the vagina is self-cleaning, has a delicately balanced environment of flora and bacteria, the hormones are generated in the fallopian tubes anyway, which are nowhere near any steam, and also, you might burn yourself.

What a shame, therefore, to find it on the programme for the nation’s first women-only festival, scheduled this August in Somerset. As if they weren’t already going to be mocked enough: for the wild foraging and the workshops entitled “Shamanic Journey Into Unity Consciousness”; for the headline act, TreeSisters; for the basket-making and the DJ promising a set about sacred sexuality.

And yet, steaming or no steaming, mockery in this instance is rendered speechless. The event simply outflanks any attempt to ridicule it. Which is when it dawned on me that they’ve done this on purpose: it is a world-class trolling event, purpose-built to give Rod Liddle and Richard Littlejohn aneurysms. Doubtless, when you get there, it will be sunshine and snakebite and the raw, lusty amusement of being everything your detractors say you are, and then some.

There will be dissenting voices on the feminist side: in the quest for the universal acceptance of equality, wouldn’t it be better not to look so cranky? This ignores the one true property of chauvinism, that it is never satisfied. You can spend your life compromising and appeasing, moving closer to them accepting that steaming your vagina has no medical basis and that you probably are not able to communicate directly with a tree, that foraging is a self-indulgent hobby for people who could perfectly well afford wild lovage in a farmers’ market, and they’ll still want more. They won’t be happy until you accept “menstrual” as a dirty word and deride female company as, in essence, second-rate. And even if you roll over to all that, they’ll vote for Jacob Rees-Mogg anyway, and wham, you’ll lose your reproductive rights, thanks. A little pushback is well overdue.

It is a useful parable for Angela Merkel, who woke up this morning in a fix: she has been rolling over to the demands of her interior minister – Horst Seehofer, leader of her partner party, the CSU – and his preferred immigration policy of Germany-for-the-Bavarians. Already, he has been accommodated to a degree that goes against what any reasonable leader would make of the refugee crisis: he wants Germany’s borders closed to anyone already registered in another EU country, and Merkel has introduced a slew of almost-measures – agreements with individual nations to reduce this “secondary migration”.

She has accepted the fundamentals of Seehofer’s argument, despite the fact that “You keep them, you’re where they landed” is a poor one. It is no way to equitably distribute displaced people; it’s politics as a game of musical chairs, one that is rigged because some of the chairs are much closer to the sea. It demands, furthermore, an end to the open-border policy that is a cornerstone of European cooperation. And, inevitably, it wasn’t enough. Seehofer is still causing trouble. It would never have been enough. Compromise only emboldens the absolutist.

In fairness to Merkel, she has striven to make the humanitarian case for refuge but, hitting obstacles, she has surrendered to the realpolitik she sees across Europe; if someone hits you with nationalism, come back with some soft-nationalism. In Emmanuel Macron’s tougher stance against homeless migrants; in Theresa May’s hostile environment; everywhere the far right advances, you can see spurts of bitter cruelty, tossed like fresh meat into the cage of a lion that won’t be satisfied until it’s savaged the whole zebra.

It’s not even a left-right issue: it’s hard-right versus everyone else. One side repudiates all humanitarian responsibilities, the other scrambles to negotiate which scraps of decency we’re allowed to keep. The mainstream moves myopically into a new reality of the right’s creation. Are we allowed some refugees if they’re women? If they’re children? If we see a picture of a dead one on a beach? If we promise to harass them and keep them in poverty once they arrive? If we let most drown, can we take the few that could swim? The values that underpin the principle of sanctuary, being enshrined in international law, are considered too obvious to restate. But without them, we are reduced to only such generosity as the other side will allow – which is, on current form, none.

Fascism is on the march: from racism to misogyny, from the usual suspects (Hungary, Turkey) to previous beacons of social democracy – Denmark’s new “ghetto” laws are terrifying, the audacity as chilling as the ambition. It will not be sated. It can only be opposed: with tree wisdom and steam – which are really just forms of celebrating difference without shame – with fearlessness, with whatever you’ve got.

• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist