We often describe feminism using words such as intersectional, inclusive, diverse and solidarity. These words have become part of the vocabulary of contemporary feminist movements. Yet there is a more difficult question that is rarely answered by the language itself: what are we actually willing to do for one another when solidarity becomes uncomfortable, politically costly or complicated?

This question has become increasingly urgent as feminist and LGBTQI+ movements across Europe face a growing backlash. Anti-rights and authoritarian actors are not only challenging individual rights; they are also exploiting existing divisions between movements, presenting equality for one group as a threat to another. TGEU’s (Trans Europe and Central Asia) 2026 In This Together research project identifies precisely this political environment, arguing that solidarity between feminist movements is increasingly strategic rather than merely aspirational. It examines how fears around identity, safety, resources and disagreement can obstruct transfeminist solidarity.

But there is a question beyond messaging.

What does solidarity require once we move from words into practice?

My argument is that transfeminist solidarity should not be understood simply as the inclusion of trans people within existing feminist movements. It should be understood as a political practice: a commitment to equality that is capable of surviving disagreement, confronting scarcity, redistributing power and challenging the structures that turn marginalised communities against one another.

In other words, solidarity is a verb.

The word inclusion sounds unquestionably positive. Yet it can contain an uncomfortable assumption, that there is a pre-existing space owned by one group, and that another group can be invited into.

TGEU’s research found that some participants experience the language of “trans inclusion” as abstract, performative or even patronising. By contrast, equality was identified as a more powerful shared feminist value. This distinction matters because inclusion can leave the underlying distribution of power untouched.

If a movement has the power to include someone, it also has the power to exclude them.

This is why transfeminist solidarity demands a different question. Instead of asking, How can feminism include trans people?, we should ask:

Who has the power to decide what feminism is, whose experiences count, whose priorities matter and who gets to shape the political agenda?

This is not an entirely new question within feminism. Feminist movements have repeatedly been transformed when groups previously treated as peripheral demanded recognition as political subjects. Emi Koyama’s foundational Transfeminist Manifesto, for example, frames transfeminism around the connection between trans women’s liberation and the liberation of women more broadly, while emphasising coalition politics as a source of feminist strength.

Maja Pan’s research similarly argues for feminist radical solidarity rather than merely normative inclusion, drawing on experiences of lesbian feminist organising in the post-Yugoslav space to examine how political alliances can be built across differences.

The lesson is important: movements do not become stronger simply by adding more people to an existing structure. Sometimes solidarity requires changing the structure itself.

Solidarity does not mean sameness

One of the most persistent obstacles to transfeminist solidarity is the assumption that people must have identical experiences in order to understand one another politically.

They do not.

Cis women and trans women do not experience gender in identical ways. Trans men, non-binary people and cis women have different relationships to gendered power. Race, class, disability, migration status, sexuality and economic position further shape how oppression is experienced.

Acknowledging these differences is not a threat to solidarity. It is its precondition.

A politics that says we are all the same risks erasing real differences. A politics that says we are too different to stand together makes coalition impossible.

Transfeminist solidarity requires a third position:

We can experience oppression differently and still be connected by political struggles against the systems that produce it.

This is one of the strengths of intersectional feminism. Oppression does not operate through a single category at a time. Patriarchy intersects with racism, capitalism, colonialism, ableism, transphobia, homophobia and other systems of power.

Transfeminist theory has similarly been used to challenge rigid binaries and to understand how gendered oppression operates across intersecting identities, while also identifying possibilities for networks of care and collective resistance. (Sage Journals)

Solidarity therefore does not require us to rank whose oppression is “worse”.

It requires us to understand how different forms of oppression can reinforce one another.

The politics of scarcity

Perhaps one of the most important insights in TGEU’s research concerns scarcity.

Marginalised communities are frequently encouraged to believe that there is not enough to go around.

Not enough funding.

Not enough political attention.

Not enough institutional space.

Not enough public resources.

Not enough safety.

Not enough recognition.

From this perspective, another group’s progress can appear as our own loss.

If trans people receive greater recognition, someone may fear that women’s rights will receive less attention. If an organisation funds a trans-led project, another group may worry that its own work will become less visible. If political attention moves toward one form of discrimination, others may feel that their struggles are being made redundant.

These concerns cannot simply be dismissed.

Material scarcity is real.

But the political question is: who created the scarcity?

The answer is rarely another marginalised community.

TGEU’s toolkit explicitly connects scarcity thinking to the concentration of wealth and power, austerity and political strategies that redirect frustration towards other marginalised groups. It argues for understanding rights as interconnected rather than treating them as a zero-sum competition.

This creates a powerful feminist question:

Why are we being encouraged to fight each other over crumbs while the structures controlling the resources remain largely untouched?

Transfeminist politics should therefore move beyond simply reassuring people that “there is enough for everyone”. It should ask why healthcare systems are underfunded, why housing is unaffordable, why grassroots organisations remain chronically under-resourced and why care work remains unequally distributed.

Solidarity becomes stronger when it identifies the structures producing scarcity rather than allowing marginalised communities to become each other’s competitors.

Safety without scapegoating

Safety is perhaps the most emotionally difficult terrain. Women have real experiences of harassment, sexual and gender-based violence. Feminism has every reason to take those experiences seriously. But taking women’s safety seriously does not require identifying trans people as a category of threat. This distinction is essential.

A transfeminist approach should be able to say two things simultaneously:

Women’s fears and experiences of violence are real.

And:

Excluding trans people is not automatically the answer to those fears.

TGEU’s research argues for shifting the conversation from individualised suspicion towards the structural causes of violence, including misogyny, patriarchy and economic insecurity. It also cautions against allowing “protection” narratives to reproduce the very paternalism that feminism has historically challenged.

This is an important feminist contradiction.

If women are constantly told that they must be protected because they are inherently vulnerable, then their autonomy is quietly replaced by paternalism.

The question should therefore not only be:

Who should be excluded to make women safe?

It should be:

What conditions would actually make everyone safer?

Well-resourced public services. Accessible healthcare. Safe housing. Effective responses to gender-based violence. Economic security. Freedom from discrimination. Spaces where people can report violence without fear. And social systems that do not force people into dependency on those who may harm them. A transfeminist future cannot promise a world without risk.

It can demand a world where safety is not achieved by sacrificing another marginalised group’s equality.

The uncomfortable chair

Solidarity becomes especially difficult when people disagree.

The TGEU toolkit identifies the fear of being misunderstood as one of the barriers to transfeminist solidarity. Some cis feminists worry about saying the wrong thing, being judged or not knowing enough. At the same time, trans people can become exhausted by repeatedly being expected to explain, defend or justify their existence.

Both realities can exist simultaneously.

This creates a difficult but necessary question:

Can feminist movements make room for uncertainty without making trans people responsible for resolving it?

I believe they can—but only if responsibility is shared.

A cis feminist who has questions should have space to learn.

A trans feminist should not have to become an unpaid educator simply because someone else has questions.

This means building cultures in which people can say, “I don’t know,” without turning that uncertainty into a demand that another marginalised person perform emotional labour.

It also means accepting that learning can be uncomfortable.

TGEU describes this as “sitting in the uncomfortable chair”: remaining present through uncertainty, disagreement and the possibility of getting things wrong rather than immediately retreating into defensiveness or exclusion.

There is something deeply feminist about this idea.

Feminism has never been a movement in which everyone started with perfect knowledge. It has developed through criticism, disagreement, self-reflection and the recognition that previously accepted assumptions can be wrong.

We do not need perfect agreement to build political solidarity.

We need a shared commitment to keep learning without abandoning each other’s humanity.

Who does the labour of solidarity?

This is where the conversation becomes even more complicated.

Solidarity requires labour.

Someone has to explain.

Someone has to listen.

Someone has to organise.

Someone has to defend.

Someone has to provide emotional support.

Someone has to attend the meeting.

Someone has to challenge the discriminatory statement.

Someone has to write the policy.

And too often, the people most affected by discrimination are expected to perform this labour themselves.

Trans people are frequently expected to explain their identities, educate institutions, respond to misinformation and defend their own humanity in spaces where they are already politically vulnerable.

This raises an uncomfortable feminist question:

Who carries the unpaid labour of making solidarity possible?

Feminism has long challenged the unequal distribution of care and emotional labour. Transfeminist solidarity should apply the same analysis to activism.

If trans people are always expected to educate cis feminists about transphobia, while cis allies remain silent around other cis people, the burden is unequal.

One of the most useful practical insights in TGEU’s research is therefore its emphasis on equipping existing cis allies to have difficult conversations with other cis feminists.

Solidarity means sharing the work.

It means not asking the person carrying the greatest burden to also carry the responsibility of explaining why the burden exists.

Representation is not power

Another distinction deserves greater attention: presence is not power.

A feminist organisation can have a trans person on a panel and still be structurally exclusionary.

It can publish a statement supporting trans people while having no trans people involved in deciding its priorities.

It can invite a trans activist to speak about “trans issues” while never asking them to participate in conversations about economic justice, migration, healthcare, education or organisational strategy.

This is tokenism disguised as representation.

TGEU’s research notes that trans people can be excluded from leadership and decision-making or treated as spokespersons for entire communities. Its accompanying manifesto therefore calls for trans, racialised and disabled feminists to have meaningful influence over agendas, priorities and political strategies.

The difference is simple:

Representation asks whether someone is in the room.

Power asks whether they can change what the room decides.

A transfeminist movement must care about the second question.

Solidarity has a cost

This, ultimately, is where I think transfeminist solidarity should be taken further.

It is easy to support solidarity when it costs nothing.

It is easy to sign a statement.

It is easy to post a rainbow graphic.

It is easy to say that everyone deserves equality.

The harder question is what happens when solidarity requires something from us.

What happens when an organisation must share funding?

When leadership must make space for someone new?

When a familiar political priority has to be reconsidered?

When an ally must challenge someone from their own movement?

When a feminist has to listen to an experience that complicates their understanding of womanhood?

When a trans person has to trust a movement that has historically excluded them?

When resources are genuinely limited?

This is where solidarity stops being a principle and becomes a practice.

If solidarity never requires us to give up power, resources, certainty or comfort, it may be sympathy rather than solidarity.

This is not an argument for ignoring material realities or pretending that movements have unlimited resources. It is an argument for confronting those realities collectively rather than allowing scarcity to become a justification for exclusion.

The joint In This Together manifesto moves in this direction by calling for governments and funders to resource grassroots human-rights organisations, particularly trans- and Black- and Brown-led organisations, while also calling for meaningful leadership and cross-movement support.

This is solidarity translated into material politics.

A transfeminist future is an intersectional future

A transfeminist future cannot stop at gender identity.

It must also ask what happens to the trans migrant who cannot access legal protection. The trans person living in poverty who cannot afford healthcare. The disabled trans person navigating inaccessible services. The trans sex worker facing criminalisation and violence. The racialised trans woman facing both racism and transmisogyny. The young person whose family rejects them and who cannot find safe housing.

This is why transfeminism must be intersectional. The goal cannot simply be to place trans people inside existing systems.

We should also ask whether those systems themselves are producing inequality.

What would healthcare look like if it were genuinely accessible?

What would housing policy look like if leaving an abusive relationship did not mean homelessness?

What would feminist organising look like if care work were properly valued?

What would political movements look like if people most affected by policies had real decision-making power?

These are not separate questions.

They are questions about what kind of society we want.

From defending rights to imagining liberation

There is a danger in activist politics of becoming permanently defensive.

We spend our time responding to attacks.

Responding to discriminatory legislation.

Responding to media misinformation.

Responding to hate campaigns.

Responding to funding cuts.

Responding to political scapegoating.

But solidarity should also allow us to imagine something beyond survival.

A transfeminist future would not merely be one in which trans people are tolerated.

It would be one in which everyone has bodily autonomy, meaningful access to healthcare, secure housing, economic dignity and freedom from violence.

It would be a society where gender does not determine whose pain is believed.

Where feminism does not have to choose between women and trans people.

Where migrants and racialised communities are not treated as threats.

Where disabled people are not treated as afterthoughts.

Where grassroots organisations are not expected to survive permanently on exhaustion.

Where political participation is not reserved for those with money, institutional status or social privilege.

And where solidarity is not a slogan used in moments of crisis, but an everyday political practice.

Feminism wins when we refuse the choice

The most powerful lesson of transfeminist solidarity may therefore be that we should refuse the choices imposed upon us.

We do not have to choose between women’s safety and trans equality.

Between reproductive justice and gender-affirming healthcare.

Between feminist politics and trans liberation.

Between recognising differences and building collective struggle.

Between disagreement and solidarity.

Between individual freedom and collective care.

The political forces seeking to roll back feminist and LGBTQI+ rights benefit when these are presented as mutually exclusive.

Our movements become weaker when we accept that framing.

Transfeminist solidarity offers another possibility.

It says that our experiences can be different without becoming enemies.

It says that equality is not a limited resource.

It says that safety should not require exclusion.

It says that disagreement does not have to end political relationships.

It says that representation without power is insufficient.

And it says that solidarity is meaningful only when it becomes action.

The challenge for feminist movements is therefore not simply to become more “inclusive”.

It is to become more willing to share power.

To share resources.

To share responsibility.

To defend one another.

To listen without demanding identical experiences.

To disagree without abandoning equality.

To challenge the structures that benefit from our division.

And to build institutions where those most affected by injustice are not merely invited to speak, but are able to shape what happens next.

Solidarity is a verb because liberation is something we do together. Our struggles are interconnected, and our freedom depends on recognising those connections, standing with one another, and challenging the systems that divide us, when there is far more that unites us than separates us.

And if feminism is ultimately a movement against systems that tell us whose bodies matter, whose voices count and whose freedom is negotiable, then transfeminist solidarity is not an optional addition to feminism.

It is one of the ways feminism can remain true to its most transformative promise:

that none of us should have to be free at the expense of someone else.

Because we cannot afford to be divided.