‘I guess what I’m saying is that a truly effective movement doesn’t try to smooth away its rough edges. It doesn’t worry about whether you like it. It doesn’t worry about how good it will be at winning over old, scary white men. Because it knows that those old, scary white men are what it protests, and that the goal is not to win them over, but to overthrow them and change the structure of society so that they’re no longer in charge’

Melissa, Sady, I don’t quite believe you mean this.

The whole tone of, for example, #Mooreandme was about ‘winning over’ that big, scary patriarch. ‘He came down from the mountain’, wrote Sady, breathlessly when Moore made his concession. The focus of ‘dear john’ is also on a ‘patriarchal’ figure. It is a personal plea. This feminism of yours, it still gives so much respect and power to these old white men. I know you do grass roots activism. I am a massive fan of Melissa’s work.

But the narrative doesn’t wash with me. You seem- Sady seems at least- to look up to those guys.

I want to hear a different story.