The sheer multiplicity of positions, tensions, debates, concerns, and complexities of my colleagues’ accounts of their feminist activist identities underscores the absence of a singular ‘feminist activism’. As well as offering a multiplicity of feminisms, my colleagues’ narratives illustrate the complexity of establishing and maintaining their activist identity in the context of the community sector. Not only were my colleagues grappling with constraints on their activist identities deriving from their intersection with the government, other funders, and institutions (such as the police) but they were also negotiating constraints on their feminist activist identities as part of their interactions with their colleagues. From their accounts, it is evident that the almost utopian ideal of feminist activism grappling predominantly with external constraints (Reinelt, 1994; Nichols, 2011; D’Enbeau and Buzzanell, 2013) overlooks the complexity of organizing through a multiplicity of feminisms within feminist organizations. The micro-politics, the small negotiations within these discussions I had with my colleagues are therefore important to how we can effectively practice solidarity in social movements, particularly when these movements have become increasingly formalized.

In the following sections, I draw together some of the elements of my colleagues’ accounts of their feminist activist identities to explore the constraints and possibilities of engaging in activism through difference. The remainder of Part IV is structured like a spiral: starting at the widest point of intersection with external stakeholders, narrowing the focus to within the collective, and finally looking at the stories of my colleagues specifically. I first attend to the context of the community sector to unpack how feminist activist identities shift and change at various intersections between the collective and stakeholders. As I noted in Part I, the increased formalization of community sector activism has led to a concern among scholars and community sector members that activism ‘has lost its bite’. Second, I look at the negotiation of ‘shared politics’ within the collective and explore how my colleagues maintained some organizational norms but challenged others. In particular, my colleagues’ narratives frequently asked the listener to direct their attention within emancipatory projects. Third, I look specifically at the cultural practices of telling stories about personal and political identities from the perspective of ‘giving an account of oneself’.