Students for Justice in Palestine and the Feminist Collective collaborated in a presentation on Wednesday focusing on gender violence and purplewashing.

According to the presentation, purplewashing refers to the use of feminist and LGBTQ+ language and imagery to create a positive, welcoming public image without providing any real support for these movements. Purplewashing is similar to pink or rainbow-washing, but focuses on the use of gender equality or feminist aesthetics rather than LGBTQ+ ones to advance a goal.

The presentation was part of SJP’s Week of Solidarity, a series of events held to “commemorate and commiserate 2 years of genocide” since Oct. 7, 2023, according to an Instagram post from the organization.

The event opened with icebreakers and introductions before explaining how gender violence and purplewashing operate in the world today. Presenters explained that gender violence is not limited to rape and sexual assault but also includes practices like female genital mutilation, honor killings and child marriage.

Speakers also said that purplewashing plays a role in how the media frames Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip. They argued that “Israeli propaganda has utilized sexual violence as a tool to appeal to Western media and feminism” to garner support in the United States.

“We see then that Israel specifically uses pinkwashing and purplewashing to kind of show themselves as a democratic, liberal country, ideals that the West has and holds in very high regard, to kind of set themselves up as, ‘Hey, we’re like you. We’re very similar,’” Gillian Rohde, president of Feminist Collective and a senior majoring in biology, told Pipe Dream. “And they use it to demonize Arabs, Palestinians and those countries.”

Speakers then pointed to the Nanjing Massacre and the Sudanese civil war as instances where gender violence has been used as a tool of war, domination and control.

An estimate by UN Women puts the death toll for women and girls in Gaza at over 33,000 since October 2023. In addition, a March 2025 report by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel found that sexual and reproductive health facilities were “systematically destroyed” in Gaza and that Israeli Security Forces routinely use sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians, including forced public stripping, nudity and threats of sexual assault and rape.

“Reporting for Palestinian women is increasingly difficult due to lack of transparency and internal accountability,” said one of the presenters. “And this focus on Israeli women weaves its way into liberal feminist rhetoric in the West and shifts attention away from widespread violence and the systemic sexual abuse of women and Israel’s actions as a state.”

In December 2023, Gaza’s largest IVF center was bombed, destroying 4,000 embryos and 1,000 sperm samples and unfertilized eggs. Speakers at the presentation said the targeting of these Gaza centers represents another form of gender violence.

“They fit into a pattern of reproductive oppression where the destruction of fertility clinics, maternity wards and medical infrastructure limits women’s ability to bear and raise children safely,” the presenter said.

After the talk, attendees scanned a QR code to access poems written by Palestinian women before breaking into groups to discuss the poetry.

Liv Rutherford, FemCo’s co-public relations chair and a junior majoring in philosophy, politics and law, selected the poems to choose works that address gender violence and the other harms it perpetuates.

That Tuesday, SJP and other groups held a “March for Gaza” [HYPERLINK: https://www.bupipedream.com/news/for-gaza-we-rise-sjp-other-groups-rally-as-part-of-week-of-solidarity/170593/] to commemorate the second anniversary of Oct. 7 and demonstrate solidarity with Palestinians.

“By collaborating with FemCo and doing this event, we get to talk about how what is happening in Palestine is also what is happening in Sudan, and is also what is happening to women throughout the world,” a representative from SJP told Pipe Dream.