Eleven women were launched into space last month. For some, it’s being celebrated as a major feminist milestone. But here on Earth, where people are being evicted, flooded out, and left behind, it feels less like liberation—and more like a spectacle.
This is not what feminist progress looks like. This is corporate, state-funded escapism dressed up in empowerment language. It’s a flex of elite access, packaged in the language of liberation. We’re told to be inspired. But inspired by what, exactly? That a select few can escape the consequences of the world they helped destroy, while the rest of us organize sandbag lines and mutual aid drop-offs in flood zones? That the face of climate collapse and billionaire-led joyrides into space now includes women?
It’s not just tone-deaf—it’s disconnected from the realities most people are facing. And while it’s true that representation matters, we have to stop pretending that inclusion in oppressive systems is the same thing as liberation from them. Eleven women on a rocket doesn’t dismantle patriarchy. It doesn’t stop the surveillance state, or the fossil fuel industry, or the prison-industrial complex. It doesn’t help the Black and Indigenous land defenders criminalized for protecting sacred land. It doesn’t stop the rising tide of climate displacement, the corporate hoarding of resources, or the war on bodily autonomy.
None of this is to say space itself is inherently bad, or that people shouldn’t be curious or moved by scientific exploration. But we have to be honest about what this moment represents. When feminist milestones are framed through access to elite programs built on resource extraction for Jeff Bethos, they obscure the broader politics at play. Progress becomes symbolic, not structural. Representation gets emphasized while redistribution remains off the table.
True liberation isn’t about joining the privileged few who escape to space—it’s about building a world where no one needs to escape at all.
