On labels

I was explaining what the underlying theme in my upcoming romance is about to a male friend, when he cut in, almost relieved.

“You’re a feminist.”

It wasn’t said with hostility. It was said with conclusion.

A neat box snapped shut.

And I remember thinking—not for the first time—that this is exactly the thing I’m trying to write about.

Because that sentence wasn’t a question. It wasn’t curiosity. It was classification.

Once something is classified, it no longer needs to be examined.

Here’s the inconvenient truth: I don’t identify as a feminist. Not because I reject women, or agency, or dignity—but because I’m uncomfortable with what the word has come to mean today. Too often it feels reduced to male-bashing, to polarising conversations that leave little room for nuance, curiosity, or shared responsibility. Somewhere along the way, the original intent—fairness, agency, choice—seems to have been buried under noise.

That doesn’t mean I believe men and women are the same. I don’t. Biology, temperament, and social conditioning exist. Pretending otherwise doesn’t make us fairer; it makes us simplistic.

But fairness? I believe in that deeply.

Fairness is not sameness.

Fairness is not ideology.

Fairness is paying attention.

It’s also possible that I’m not always clear when I explain what my book is about. I tend to talk about moments, patterns, subtext—about what’s felt rather than declared. Perhaps that leaves space for people to fill in the gaps with labels they already understand. But even then, the speed with which the label arrives is telling.

In my book, one of my characters says this:

“I speak, and people hear it as suggestion; a man repeats it and suddenly it’s strategy. I correct someone, I’m ‘difficult.’ He interrupts, he’s ‘assertive.’ People trust male voices first—not out of intention, but habit. It’s reflex. And reflex is the hardest thing to unlearn.”

When I shared this, the response wasn’t, Is this true?

It was, Oh. So this is a feminist thing.

That reaction is the point.

Recently, another friend—someone who had previously denied that he behaves this way—shared an experience that stayed with me.

He and his business partner (both men) were in a meeting with two associates: a man and a woman. Halfway through the conversation, my friend realised something uncomfortable (thanks to me calling out men's behaviour to attention). Without meaning to, he had been directing most of his attention toward the man. Catching himself, he made a conscious effort to engage both of them equally.

What unsettled him more was what he noticed next.

When his partner spoke, he addressed only the man—barely looking at the woman at all.

Later, my friend admitted something that mattered: the bias was so unconscious that if it hadn’t been pointed out to him earlier, he would never have noticed it. There was no intent. No dismissal. Just reflex.

That’s the part that’s hardest to talk about—because reflex doesn’t feel like wrongdoing. It feels like neutrality.

So when a man is told—gently, even—that he may not value a woman’s opinion as readily as another man’s, the leap is rarely introspection. It’s categorisation. This is feminism. And once it’s feminism, it can be dismissed as exaggeration, agenda, oversensitivity.

What gets lost is the question underneath:

Is there something here worth examining?

I’m not interested in proving men wrong. I’m not interested in vilifying anyone. I’m interested in noticing patterns we’ve normalised so deeply they no longer feel like choices. No villain. No conspiracy. Just habit.

And habits are powerful precisely because they don’t feel personal.

The unheard voices in my book aren’t unheard because they’re weak. They’re unheard because the world is trained—quietly, unconsciously—to listen elsewhere first.

If that observation makes someone uncomfortable enough to reach for a label, maybe that discomfort deserves more attention than the label itself.

I’m not asking for allegiance to a movement.

I’m asking for fairness without defensiveness.

Listening without shortcuts.

That’s not feminism.

That’s awareness.