We have watched feminism get polished into a product. Branded, filtered, sold back to us in pastel packaging. Empowerment now comes with a promo code and a curated feed.

I am not buying it. Neither should you.

Real feminism, the kind that frees women rather than makes them famous, does not ask for permission or wait for applause. It needs clarity. It needs all of us, men included, to show up with purpose.

Feminism is not a vibe. It is a verb.

Modern feminism sometimes feels more like an aesthetic than a movement. Lip service replaces legislation. Merchandise masks generations of exploitation. Visibility gets sold as victory. I have sat in panels curated for optics with no measurable impact on the communities they claim to represent. I have watched DEI pledges issued without a single Latina in the room where decisions get made. Hashtags outnumber hires. That is not feminism. That is content strategy.

Real feminism is intersectional, or it is irrelevant.

You cannot champion women while ignoring Indigenous women, Black women, trans women, undocumented women, working-class women. You cannot claim empowerment while hoarding opportunity. You cannot say "all women" and mean only the ones who look like you. Feminism without intersectionality is not progress. It is public relations.

Men belong in this movement.

I am tired of the narrative that paints men as adversaries by default. Feminism that only chastises men, instead of building alongside them, forgets something obvious: every one of us is the product of a father, and raised alongside brothers, cousins, tíos, friends who are men. They are not the enemy. Treating them as one undermines the depth this movement is supposed to have.

Men have a role in building equity, not as saviors, not as placeholders, but as partners and co-conspirators in dismantling the systems that hold all of us back. Patriarchy does not only constrain women. It traps men in silence, suppresses what they feel, and rewards dominance over empathy.

The men worth naming do not watch from the sidelines. They show up. They raise daughters and sons to think differently. They ask questions. They sit with discomfort instead of dodging it. Then they act.

I am not here as a sidekick to feminism. I am in it because it is also my fight.

This is personal, and it is political.

Latino Professionals was not built to fit anyone's idea of polite progress. It exists to challenge what power looks like, and who gets to hold it. We are not interested in feminism that flatters power. We are interested in feminism that builds alongside it, and changes it.

So if your version of feminism makes room for branding but not for brotherhood, you have missed the point.

We are not enemies. We are capable of more than that framing allows. What we are building outlasts a trend cycle because it runs on truth instead of engagement.

And we are building it together.