The feminization of resistance: the narratives of #NiUnaMenos as social transformative action

Abstract

The Argentinean movement #NiUnaMenos (NUM) represents one of the most relevant transnational examples of Latin American feminist mobilization against gender-based violence and can be understood as vanguard of a current tide of feminized resistance on a global scale. This article addresses two central narratives in the discourses and social practices of three founders of the NUM; one about feminist mobilization as a social transformative moment that creates distinctive protest performances in the pursuing of a liveable life despite the challenging restrictive possibilities; and the other about the intersection between gender and class in the struggle against the neoliberal patriarchal precarization of life, related to the lack of the collective systems of social protection against gender-based violence. The analysis of these narratives highlights a feminization of resistance that promotes a radical transformation of the social system, where politics also at a micro level question capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy by producing alternative knowledges, subjectivities, and epistemologies. Particularly, the study of the experience of enhanced precariousness created by the operation of patriarchal violence, and the resistance expressed in engendered alternative ethical and non-violent responses, reveals in the narratives the strength of a precarity awareness becoming a network of transnational and cross-identities solidarity.