Famous US podcaster, white nationalist and ardent Trump supporter Nick Fuentes was among the first to share a slogan that went viral on TikTok. In this video he sits in front of an array of US national flags, wearing a hat with the slogan “America First”, and shouts: “Guys win again – there will never, ever be a female president. […] We will keep you down forever. You will never control your own bodies. You will never be the president of the global empire – never gonna happen, sweetie. Your body, our choice.” 

Far from constituting a coincidence or macabre joke, this slogan is a co-optation of feminist standpoints and might be integral to current fascist and right-wing populist narratives. Worryingly, it is the second, and potentially violent, co-optation of the feminist slogan since it was mis-used (still somewhat democratically) at anti-vaccination demonstrations during the Covid-19 pandemic before. 

The slogan “Your body, our choice” alludes to the long-standing and widely used feminist slogan “My body, my choice” that has famously been used by (black) feminist movements since the 1970’s to express feminist standpoints, such as freedom of choice, autonomy over one’s body and to peacefully resist patriarchal oppression worldwide. 

A return to antifeminist sentiments was expected by experts after the 2024 US presidential election results. After all, the current US trend to cut down on abortion rights and minority protections has been under way for a few years and is expected to only take up speed in light of the success of the republican party. Notably, social media platforms such as TikTok featured Trump supporters who shared the two slogans “your body my choice” and “get back to the kitchen”, which went viral on the platform within days. An Institute for Strategic Dialogue (article) even suggests the slogan was widely posted on female content creators’ pages as well as used offline by young boys in school contexts. Some videos went as far as to use the slogan with gun shots playing in the background, while other users threaten counter-violence on the same platform under the premise of protecting women. 

Ideas of strong male leaders and masculinity in general are core aspects of the myth of superiority that are integral to fascist ideologies. American philosopher Jason Stanley explains that fascism is characterised, among others, by stories of a mythic past, propaganda, cult of the leader (anti-intellectualism), unreality (challenging truth), hierarchies of groups (i.e., white supremacy), and stories of victimhood. 

Videos, such as Fuentes’ not only clearly threaten to (violently) suppress women (and other genders) in the future, in combination with Fuentes’ white nationalist background, this slogan constitutes more than a macabre joke – it shows the reversal of feminist standpoints for fascist movements. This is because it not only paints the idea of a global empire of (white) men that is based on Trump’s leadership, but it substantially challenges ideas of the equality of all genders in the US context (because while Fuentes is speaking of women only, we can be certain he also excludes all others). 

Interestingly, this is not the first co-optation of the slogan. In its original form, the feminist slogan has previously been mis-applied by anti-vaccine movements in the USA as well as in European countries, such as Germany. Anti-vaccination protesters from Maryland (picture) protest against vaccination policies for health care workers in the US, holding a sign with “My body, my choice” on it and a crossed-out syringe symbolising COVID-19 vaccinations. Curiously, in this first instance, the idea of freedom of choice and sovereignty over one’s body were therefore mobilised with the originally feminist slogan “My body, my choice” and co-opted by anti-vaccination protesters to invoke a wave of protest and right to bodily autonomy against state authorities. 

The vaccine protester pictured above told the NPR reporter the use of the slogan was “‘an ironic thing’, he said, meant to expose what he sees as the hypocrisy of Democrats who support both abortion and vaccine mandates. Blodget said he is ‘pro-life’ and believes that  COVID vaccines are not immunizations but a form of gene therapy, which is not true.” This co-optation of feminist standpoints and means of resistance flips their original reasoning onto its head, and – crucially – misapplies them as a means to challenge truth claims in the governance of the pandemic. However, while certainly worthy of critique (moral double standards, ironic joke gone wrong, hyper-individualised view of politics in crisis, etc.), the means of peaceful demonstration could still be understood as a successful means to discuss and debate within democratic orders. After all, peaceful protesting strengthens the idea of the democracy that said protesters protest within.   

The current TikTok trend constitutes a further co-optation of this movement, I suggest, in that the slogan becomes an active participant in the debate that challenges ideas of equality and emancipation. In this instance, the feminist slogan is co-opted far more worryingly, in that its means of escalation and outright call to deprive individuals of their constitutional rights foster violence and anti-democratic tendencies that are antagonistic of democratic order altogether. 

In the first co-optation, feminist ideas of bodily autonomy were misapplied to justify protests for the furthering of hyper-individualised ideas of autonomy of (already privileged, mainly white, male) bodies in a crisis event. Ethically speaking, this is not only important to note for questions of equality and intersectionality in global politics, which in itself is useful to understand and resist populist narratives. Even further, and more difficult to navigate, it poses the question to what extent and how the strong bodily connotation of Covid politics (for instance, vaccine policies) opened – for the first time, maybe – the white male gaze to the realities of having one’s body governed by state authority. 

The second co-optation that is witnessed on TikTok these days, however, moves to “Your body, our choice” and thereby outright and violently challenges women’s (and other genders’) autonomy over their body, even linking their oppression to the idea of a global white, male empire – it is linked with fascism. 

This dynamic is difficult to spot in the wake of complex crisis events, such as the Covid pandemic, and even more difficult to stop once the co-optation of feminist standpoints is established – both, as an ironic joke gone wrong, as showcased with Covid, and as a tool to oppress, as portrayed after the US elections. While the slogan’s use, even during the pandemic, strongly contradicts ideas of equality put forward by (black) feminist movements, especially the current trend portrayed by Trump supporters suggests that its users appear to feel the legitimate moral claim to reappropriate it to further cement hierarchies between genders and races. 

Both instances are worrying, albeit to different degrees and scopes. And both call for a return to the question of solidarity. The fascist co-optation of feminist standpoints is not simply problematic for women*, but for all individuals. This calls for white allyship, male allyship and the continuous practice to learn about, discuss, speak up against and dismantle structures of violence seeking to oppress genders and races, and a return to debates on how best to support and become accomplice to those needing support within these structures. This starts with understanding we do not speak of white women only, but of all those marginalised queer, Black, disabled bodies, and others that fascism paints as the abject body and that Fuentes wants to “keep down”. 

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