Last Sunday, on International Women’s Day, Anja and I spent time with you as we saw eight women receive the 2026 FNV Femforce Award for outstanding gender equality activism. Our friend Dr. E, a brand-new PhD who wrote a stellar dissertation on digital contraceptive practices, was among the recipients. All of us, before joining this year’s Feminist March, had gathered in a room and listened to female speakers address the issues facing womanhood today.

I am not a woman.

When you look at me, you may think I am.

I don’t mind that.

Call me ‘she’.

I am not a woman.

When people tell me “Pick a gender”, even “non-binary” feels like too much of a declaration. When I look out into the world, and see the social dynamic of various genders with one another, and the ways in which the members of each present, behave, and negotiate, all I can think is:

I am colour-blind in an apparently vividly-coloured world. I do not understand what you are talking about.

I’m not a woman, so on International Women’s Day, I’m an ally.

The word “ally”, unlike what we tell each other, is not a self-descriptor, but a gift. I don’t know if you think I’m your ally, but I do my best to be one.

When you tell me of sexual harassment at work, on the tram, in the shops, on the street, I listen.

When you tell me yet another male coworker repeated your exact words for credit, ignoring your input entirely, I listen.

When you tell me your lactation room at work is a windowless prayer room slash utility closet with a mop bucket containing the same water it did two years ago, I listen.

When you tell me you’re scared to cycle home at night, I listen. And I cycle alongside you when I can.

When you tell me you’re scared to announce your pregnancy because you worry it will not result in a permanent contract, I listen.

When you tell me you’re so sick of doing the vast majority of the emotional, physical, and psychological labour at home because your male partner can’t figure out how to reconcile himself with the changing of a diaper, I listen.

When you tell me you’re sick of people touching you or your pregnant belly without asking and commenting on your appearance without pause, I listen.

And then my heart skips a beat.

When my hair is touched unconsentingly, it is by you.

When I receive the fifth comment in a workday about my headwrap, it is by you.

When I express myself with a sharp tongue and am told I shouldn’t be so angry, it is by you.

When I confide in someone about the racism I experience and am told I’m seeing things wrong because of my flawed perspective, it is by you.

When I am a twelve-year old told, with a sigh, in front of a large crowd of parents and children, “what are we to do with you?”, it is by you.

When I am told it would be a delight to have a wife rather than a husband because of the improvement it would bring to the balance of emotional labour and communication in your home, it is by you.

When I call you into a kinder, more nuanced narrative in which each one of us accepts accountability for the harm we unintentionally cause to those around us and I am told my wokeness is toxic, it is by you.

On International Women’s Day, we should focus on the very real challenges facing womanhood today. Ignore racism, the environment, transphobia, anti-queer violence, Palestine. You do you.

But if you fail to appreciate, in your walk and your talk, the role you play in the things I allow you to ignore, I struggle. If you fail to mention, even in passing, how much work you do to understand that you do what you don’t want others to do to you, I struggle.

We, non-women, childless women, unemployed women, trans women, brown women, could be your fiercest allies.

But when we’re in a room with you, and the picture you paint of The Woman™ is that of a white, straight, cisgendered, working, able-bodied, male-partnered, child-raising human Identifying as female, we laugh. We laugh at how backwards it is, how mid-twentieth century your problems are, and how sad it is when people forget the word “intersectionality” altogether when they stand to only benefit from it. We laugh that Amsterdam hosts a Feminist March and you have forgotten what feminism means, does, questions, explores, exposes.

I want to be your ally.

But make me want it more.