Feminism Beyond Left and Right by Australian feminist philosopher Holly Lawford-Smith (Polity Press, 2025) is a real breath of fresh air. Now, I warn readers beforehand that although the book is short at 119 pages, it is very dry--after all, it was written by a philosopher. Nevertheless, this is a book that needs to be read and discussed by feminists of all stripes, for it advances a very controversial thesis with many profound implications for the political work of feminism.
And what is that thesis? “People from anywhere on the political spectrum can be feminists” (17).
Perhaps some of our readers will retort, “Well, of course people from anywhere on the political spectrum can be feminists!” That is certainly the way I feel about the matter. But many feminists will say, “That is impossible. Feminism belongs to the Left, and if you are on the Right, by definition you cannot be a feminist.” And it is very possible some on the right will say, “No one sincerely on the Right side of the political spectrum could possibly be a feminist, for feminism has destroyed/is destroying Western civilization, which destruction is anathema to the Right.”
I find the latter matched set of views utterly tedious, because I encounter them every single day. In feminist circles, the idea that someone who is not on the Left could be a feminist is viewed as utter heresy. It considered inconceivable, and any idea otherwise is either a treacherous lie or an ignorant self-deception. And in circles associated with my CoJC faith community, ‘feminism’ is often considered an “f word”—a swear word. Feminists are considered either useful idiots of darker political forces or as sworn tools of Satan. Both communities try my patience.
I would not care so much if the stakes were not so high. You cannot build any flourishing human civilization—whether secular or Zion--without both men and women, and without knowing how women stand in relation to men (and how men and women stand before God). Get that right, and your civilization will survive, thrive, and flourish. Get it wrong, and you wind up living in Kandahar or Sonagachi. The cause of women is truly beyond left and right; it is truly the cause of all persons wanting to build a thriving society. I can say these things until I’m blue in the face, but I’ve had little luck with that approach. From now on, I think I’ll try handing them Lawford-Smith’s book instead, and suggest we discuss it after they’ve had a chance to read it.
In this review, I’ll provide a summary of Lawford-Smith’s argument, but since it’s a carefully constructed one, you will want more than I can provide in these few pages. As a note of preface, Lawford-Smith’s argument is intended primarily for those on the Left, but if her thesis is correct, it has clear implications for the Right as well, of course.
Lawford-Smith begins by recounting a now-infamous incident from 2019. After four full years of attempting to find a venue that would host a panel event where radical feminists could offer criticism of gender ideology--which tells you something about the peak trans period of the mid-2010s--finally an organization stepped up to host the event, and all hell promptly broke loose. The venue, you see, was the Heritage Foundation. The feminist speakers and the feminists in the audience were excoriated, first for daring to oppose gender ideology when it was the public position of the Left, but second, for daring to “work with” the Right by holding their event at Heritage. Was it right, Lawford-Smith asks, for these feminists to be condemned for “working with” Heritage?
Lawford-Smith begins her argument by asking what a feminist is or does and concludes that a feminist is “a person who works for women’s equality (whether of outcome or of opportunity), women’s individual self-determination, women’s liberation or women’s interests (as the person understands them, whether or not that is also as they are); or who works against male dominance.” (15)
This definition does not necessarily rule out those who would not consider themselves Leftists. Lawford-Smith gives the following example:
“Consider a Christian women who endorses a complementary thesis: that God created man and woman differently and complementary to one another. On her view, it is not in women’s interests that workplaces make paternity leave mandatory . . .No law or policy that works for women’s sameness with men will be in women’s interests as this woman understands them because in her view women are different from men, and what is needed is for women’s difference to be accommodated such that women can lead good lives qua women. How the Christian woman we’re thinking of fills out the details of what is in women’s interests will be very different to how a feminist with a sameness standard fills out those details. But say the ‘work’ she does is for the equal recognition of women’s contributions as being on a par with men’s—we need both family life and work, and the work of creating and sustaining family life is important and honourable. It is hard for me to see why this woman should not be considered a feminist just because other women reject complementarianism. (And I say this as someone who rejects complementarianism.)” (9)
Thus, argues Lawford-Smith, not all whom she would consider feminists under her definition will also consider themselves or be characterized by others as Leftists. Furthermore, Lawford-Smith asserts that there have been times in the history of feminism where women have walked away from the Left. She points to feminists in the mid to late 1960s leaving the Left in disgust, quoting second wave feminist Carol Hanisch as saying, “Women have left the movement in droves. The obvious reasons are that we are tired of being sex slaves and doing shitwork for men whose hypocrisy is so blatant in their political stance of liberation for everyone (else).” (18) The recently brought-to-light scandal of Cesar Chavez’s treatment of women in his farmworker’s movement is only the most belated example of how the Left has betrayed women time and time again. To paraphrase Andrea Dworkin, the Left insists on having both its politics and its whores, and insistence on having the second is frankly incompatible with the first. To many women, the Left seems like a social justice movement for minority and marginalized men, but not a justice movement for women.
Maybe the more pressing issue, says Lawford-Smith, is not whether feminists should work with the Right, but rather whether feminists should work with the Left. She offers a variety of reasons for why women might want to ask themselves that question:
- Leftist men naturalize women’s ‘difference’ from men and so do not see it as an Injustice.
- The distribution of labour within the leftist movement is sexist.
- Women’s contributions to theory and strategy are ignored or dismissed by leftist men.
- Leftist men sexualize and degrade women.
- Feminism should not be practiced as identity politics: the left is not identity politics for women (it is not women fighting against ‘their own’ oppression).
- If women remain in the left, they will reward leftist men . . . and this will prevent the restructuring of the relationship between the sexes.
- The left asks women to wait until ‘after the revolution’; women’s issues are too urgent to be postponed.
- Radical politics, just like every other major institution, is male dominated; feminists fight against, not together with, what is male dominated.
- The ‘underground radical society’ of the left depends on the exploitation of women; feminism is a movement against women’s exploitation.
- ‘Radicals’ are just men getting together to pretend to be revolutionaries; feminists want to be actual revolutionaries.
- Radical women are beholden to an ‘invisible audience’ of leftist men, the ‘boldest and most fearless’ women’s liberationists were those who had fled or never belonged to leftist organizations.
- Leftists prioritize the left: they have attacked feminists for being insufficiently anti-capitalist; they have used women’s liberation meetings as left-recruitment opportunities. Feminists prioritize women. There is an irreconcilable conflict in priorities. (30-31)
I myself have sometimes wondered why women ally so strongly with the Left when the Left has so clearly sold out women’s interests by prioritizing the interests of men who choose to identify as women, by expanding surrogacy rights, by advocating for the decriminalization of prostitution and the protection of pornography as free speech, not to mention democratic socialist stances arguing against the incarceration of those who harm women and against border controls which serve to counteract the abnormal sex ratio effects of those who migrate illegally, which effects harm women. In the past, the simple answer to why women ally with the Left would have been abortion politics, but Dobbs was decided during the Biden Administration when Democrats also controlled both houses of Congress (2022). Democrats did not choose to die on the hill of abortion politics at that critical moment, and now the fight is at the state level. How, exactly, has the Left shown itself to be the steadfast friend of women? I’m sorry, I don’t see it. Sonagachi is just as much of a hellhole for women as Kandahar.
Lawford-Smith recounts her own tale of standing up for women’s interests and discovering those on the Left were upset at her for doing so:
“Not long after I first ‘came out’ as a gender-critical feminist, I was at a conference in Boston where two feminist philosophers took me aside to—as I’m sure they saw it—attempt to talk some sense into me about my stance on trans women. One, the more senior of the two, implored me not to allow myself to be a useful idiot for the right. (I’m pretty sure she didn’t use that term, but I can’t remember exactly how she put it.) The right opposes men claiming to be women, so if I oppose men claiming to be women, then I’m doing the work of the right and making it possible for them to use me as a kind of shield: ‘Hey, look, even feminists agree with us about trans women!’ I remember being polite and hearing her out but privately wondering why she thought I was the one being used. After all, couldn’t the same be said about her and her stance on trans women? Didn’t her acceptance of men’s claims to be women make her a useful idiot for the left in their infinite quest for freedom, even from the body and biological sex itself? Wasn’t there something embarrassing about a self-declared feminist who couldn’t say ‘no’ to leftist men insisting that some of their comrades really are women? Aren’t they the ones using feminists like her as a shield?” (53-54)
Boy, even asking these questions is like a refreshing breeze in a hothouse. They are excellent questions, but no one has had the temerity—or the spine—to ask them on the Left. This lack of spine is a betrayal of women by the Left. Indeed, Lawford-Smith wonders out loud how many women have been harmed by the policies of the Left compared to how many women have been harmed by the policies of the Right: “If we were to really weigh up all the harms of all the things the left and right are good and bad at when it comes to women’s issues, I for one find it difficult to predict which side would emerge the victor. . . As half the population, women are a significant lobby group capable of advocating for their interests to be represented by any party anywhere on the political spectrum.” (57) Amen to that sentiment.
Returning to the question of whether feminists should be allowed to work with the Right or whether they should lose their membership in the club of feminism if they do, we find Lawford-Smith providing the clarity that sometimes only a philosopher can bring to bear:
“Working independently for the same ends is not ‘working together,’ even if the world of each group helps the other to get what they want. This distinction is important because the idea that people are working together is often weaponized in order to get one groups to change its ends (or its reasons, and so its ends). When other feminists accuse gender-critical feminists of ‘working with religious fundamentalists’ because they both want to stop childhood medical transition, their aim is to get the gender-critical feminists to stop opposing childhood medical transition. There is not actually a substantive objection to people working together--people are not working together in the first place. There is nothing of moral substance beyond the mere dislike of the end that is worked for.” (72-73)
Furthermore, this type of us-versus-them approach breeds both enmity and contempt. These strong negative feelings, Lawford-Smith argues, must be reserved for extreme cases where a group’s form of existence is threatened: “as long as those others’ choices do not prevent your own, both your individual choices and your ability to form associations with others who share your beliefs, then they are not a threat. And if they are not a threat, then they are not the enemy . . . .Indeed, you could work with them in pursuit of shared ends: you could be friends . . . Contempt against sex traffickers, yes; contempt against those who think ‘marriage’ should be exclusively between a man and a woman, no.” (100-101). It should not be out of bounds to work with people on things you and they agree on, and work against the same people on things you and they disagree on. Everyone is going to be wrong about something. After all, says Lawford-Smith, “both the left and the right uphold male power in different ways,” (116), and sometimes they are even united in ways that harm women, such as the protection offered to pornographers by both the Left and the Right.
All of this analysis leads Lawford-Smith to the conclusion that feminism is indeed beyond Left and Right. Feminism prioritizes women, and neither the Left nor the Right do so. She comments, “A lot of what goes on under the name ‘feminism’ today has little to do with women; it is global justice by another name. We must return to the idea of women as a class, meaning women as women . . . . Feminism is work for women. It is not work for people, some of whom happen to be women. Advocating for more social housing or more lenient prison sentencing doesn’t make you a feminist. These projects might all be good for everyone, but that something is good for everyone doesn’t make it feminist.” (106)
At the end of her book, Lawford-Smith spends, alas, only one paragraph talking about the way forward for those feminists who see that feminism truly is beyond Right and Left. It’s actually the same as the route my co-authors, Savannah Eccles Johnston and Holly Hamilton-Bleakley, and I have adopted for our new book on embodied feminism. Our collective inspiration was Andrea Dworkin, when she wrote,
“I would like to see in this movement a return to what I call primitive feminism. It’s very simple. It means that when something hurts women, feminists are against it. The hatred of women hurts women. Pornography is the hatred of women. Pornography hurts women. Feminists are against it, not for it. . . . Feminism is a political practice of fighting male supremacy on behalf of women as a class, including all the women you don’t like, including all the women you don’t want to be around.” (118, 103)
Lawford-Smith comments, “When something hurts women, feminists are against it. They’re not against it only if it fits into ‘team left’ politics. (The same goes for ‘team right’ politics.) They’re not against it only if ‘team left’ women are hurt by it. (The same goes for ‘team right’ women.) Feminism is not a political tribe first, women of the political tribe second. It is women first.” (118)
She is absolutely right, in my view. “Feminists take the women’s side because the women’s side needs taking, and most men sure aren’t taking it.” (15) It really is time for women as a class to evaluate and grade the Left and the Right according to their platforms and their actions with reference to the things that harm women. I made my own effort in that respect a few years back with the Seventh Wave Feminist Manifesto (https://squaretwo.org/aerow.html). My hope was to create a scoring sheet that would evaluate parties and candidates according to their stances on issues such as pornography, prostitution, surrogacy, and many other issues of concern to women. While I have not had the bandwidth to implement this evaluative exercise, it is this kind of effort based on ‘primitive feminism’ that is needed now. The Left doesn’t own feminism, and the Right does not yet see that it desperately needs feminism. As half the electorate, we women could make them see this.
That is, while our two major political parties continue to slight women’s issues, it is incumbent upon women to politically pressure them to do better, and to politically punish them if they do not. No woman should be voting ‘team left’ or ‘team right’; every woman should be voting ‘team women.’ I’m grateful to Holly Lawford-Smith for her trenchant analysis, and plan to refer many friends and acquaintances to this very useful and important book, Feminism Beyond Left and Right. Remember that title.
Full Citation for this Article: Cassler, V.H. (2026) "Book Review: Feminism Beyond Right and Left by Holly Lawford-Smith," SquareTwo, Vol. 19 No. 2 (Summer 2026), http://squaretwo.org/Sq2ArticleCasslerReviewFeminismBeyond.html, accessed <give access date>.
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