Turns out intersectionality is a concept that’s basic in theory but wildly divisive in application, especially when — as with feminism — you’re trying to get a coalition of activists with diverse identities to rally around a single shared goal. Whether it was getting the vote, reforming discriminatory laws, or even just pushing the so-called radical notion that women are people, feminism’s aim has always been to advocate for women because they are women. Once it was declared “bullshit” to focus on that commonality, the feminist cause fragmented with alarming swiftness. Since then, it’s had one crisis after another.

There were the toxic Twitter wars documented by Michelle Goldberg in 2014, as feminists eagerly trashed each other online over perceived political incorrectness. There was the implosion of the anti-Trump Women’s March over racial tensions, starting with complaints that the movement was too focused on pink-pussy-hatted white feminism, and ending with the diverse new leadership melting down amid allegations of anti-Semitism. There was Planned Parenthood’s astonishing apology this spring for focusing “too narrowly on women’s health,” closely followed by the schadenfreude-ridden girlboss downfalls in which powerful women, once feminist icons, were suddenly ousted from their own companies in the name of social justice.

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This need to rally against a villainous antagonist is endemic to much contemporary activism, which tends to define itself by what it’s against rather than what it’s for. (Notice how the struggle for civil rights has lately rebranded itself as “anti-racism”; notice how much activist rhetoric focuses on dismantling and tearing-down without any mention of what might be built.) Of course, so many of these movements turn into circular firing squads, as some people invariably become more interested in ejecting apostates from within than advocating for change in the wider world. Consider how many more feminists want to defenestrate J. K. Rowling for her perceived transphobia than to set aside their differences in the name of advocating for shared policy goals.