Guest post by MJ Vijayan

The recent statement issued by members of the Althea Feminist Friendship Collective on the forthcoming Zero Tolerance (ZeTo) campaign in Kerala[1] deserves a serious and thoughtful response. I hope it will not be taken as a hostile document. Far from that, it is, in many ways, an anxious one – anxious about the state, about punitive excess, about the global history of ‘zero tolerance’ policies and campaigns, and about the risk of reinforcing authoritarian or brahminical patriarchies in the name of justice.

Those anxieties are not frivolous. Feminist history teaches us to be wary of state power. Yet feminist history also teaches us that structures do not shift without public contestation, moral clarity, and organised political pressure.

As a cis male articulating within feminist and progressive left traditions, I do so with caution. I am conscious that feminism is not my intellectual inheritance to define. It is a movement and epistemology built by women and gender minorities through struggle, often against men like me. Yet it is precisely because feminism is not merely identity but political practice that it demands engagement across genders, including critical engagement. Continue reading Zero Tolerance, Democratic Responsibility, and the Question of Feminist Praxis: MJ Vijayan →