Beyond binaries
Decolonial feminist theory insists that emancipation is a non-binary praxis, one that rejects absolutist shortcuts and thrives in the “gray areas” where struggles intersect. By drawing on queer theories of fluidity, I frame liberation as a practice that transcends absolutist confines, inviting solidarity that thrives in relational complexity rather than suffocating in a binary box of simplification.
The main message I want to convey is one's self-determination (or agency) must not come at the expense of, or be paved by, the retraction of another's. Liberation must embrace complexity to avoid reproducing the very systems it seeks to dismantle.
It's pretty simple in my head; How do intersecting privileges (citizenship, class, cisgender, proximity to whiteness) allow one to transcend oppression faced by others with varied barriers? How do Western communists, feminists, queer activists sideline anti-Blackness and Global South realities in order to overrepresent an isolated struggle? Figures like jk rowling demonstrate how proximity to an identity do not prevent, but facilitate perpetuating harm towards said identity.
Take the Tories. Plenty of examples to draw from, but Suella Braverman’s politics—anti-migrant, anti-trans, yet rooted in her identity as a British Asian cis-het woman—expose how proximity to marginalised identities can obscure harm. Her rhetoric frames brown migrants as “threats,” leveraging colonial binaries (deserving vs. undeserving, native vs. invader) to justify exclusion. Cruella exemplifies how single-issue politics (brown "representation") erase intersectional suffering. She herself has transcended the oppression of a brown woman, and so, builds that barrier instead of dismantling it all together (because of course, her privileges were paid for by Black Africans in Kenya). Queer decolonial scholar Jin Haritaworn discusses these tactics to "feminise" oppression (the same way isr4el pinkwashes oppression), where racialised elites weaponise fragments of their identity (e.g., gender, sexuality) to attack others (2015).
Similarly in Cyprus, middle-class women employ migrant workers while demonising migrants (especially queer ones) as “cultural threats.” These acts, fueled by what Sara Ahmed calls “straightening devices” (2006)—social pressures to conform to patriarchal heteronormativity—reveal how single-issue feminism fails. On the other hand, the April 2025 Turkish Cypriot protests against Ankara’s neo-colonial dominance weaponised girls’ rights to bodily autonomy by policing girls under authoritarian secularism instead of disabling the policing power of the state and political Islam. Decolonial feminist scholar Chandra Mohanty argues that such complexities are where liberation is most radical (2003). These girls could have embodied what Chela Sandoval calls “differential consciousness”—a flexibility to navigate multiple oppressions without reducing themselves to a single struggle (2000).
María Lugones’ concept of “world-traveling” (2003) invites us to move beyond rigid categories, recognising that individuals and communities inhabit multiple, overlapping realities of power and resistance. It refuses to rank oppressions (e.g., colonialism over patriarchy) or reduce liberation to a zero-sum game. Instead, it embraces what Gloria Anzaldúa termed nepantla—a Nahuatl-derived space of “in-betweenness” where contradictions coexist and transformation begins (1987). Furthermore, Queer Cypriot activists who refuse to prioritise national sovereignty over LGBTQ+ rights (or vice versa) exemplify this non-binary praxis. Their work thrives in the in-between, challenging both colonial structures and heteropatriarchy without absolutism.
Liberation is not a fixed destination but a continuous negotiation of intersecting struggles. Not a contest of oppressions, but a collective practice of world-building. As Audre Lorde wrote, “It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences… Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic” (1984).
Decolonial feminism’s non-binary ethos demands we abandon the tidy confines of single-issue politics and absolutist allegiances. Whether in Cyprus, the UK, or beyond, true liberation lies in embracing the messiness of intersecting struggles—not as a compromise, but as the only path to enduring transformation and agency.
References
Ahmed, S. (2006). Queer Phenomenology.
Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands/La Frontera.
Haritaworn, J. (2015). Queer Lovers and Hateful Others.
Lorde, A. (1984). Sister Outsider.
Lugones, M. (2003). Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition Against Multiple Oppressions.
Mohanty, C. T. (2003). Feminism Without Borders.
Muñoz, J. E. (2009). Cruising Utopia.
Puar, J. (2007). Terrorist Assemblages.
Sandoval, C. (2000). Methodology of the Oppressed.
