It is not women who are being exclusionary when we protect our spaces.It is not women who are the barrier to real, lasting change. When people refuse
It is not women who are being exclusionary when we protect our spaces.
It is not women who are the barrier to real, lasting change.
When people refuse to recognize that many males are vulnerable to male violence, they are the ones being exclusionary.
They are the ones ignoring the full, complex truth. That disabled males, poor males, elderly males, small framed males, minoritized males, migrant and refugee males are all at elevated risk of male violence.Â
We cannot heal wounds we refuse to see.
We cannot prevent violence we refuse to name.
The real problem is not women drawing necessary boundaries to safeguard themselves and others.
The real failure is deeper—and it fails everyone.
It is the failure to get to the root.
Getting to the Root
When we refuse to get to the root of an issue, all we do is polish the surface.
It may look like progress from the outside, but for those who needed real change the most, nothing meaningful has shifted.
Failing to address brutal, inhumane prison policies where violence festers and spreads.
Failing to fix the criminal justice system that often hardens, rather than heals, brokenness.
Failing to intervene early in schools, families, and communities, where young boys learn that dominance and violence are their only tools.
Failing to provide financial resources, opportunity, and dignity to vulnerable communities.
Failing to invest in real, accessible mental health care that could break the cycles of harm before they turn fatal.
When you fail to do these things, you fail boys. You fail men. You fail women. You fail families. You fail entire generations.
True healing, true justice, true transformation requires more than just satisfying, “I want.”
There must be something deeper gained—something that uplifts, protects, and restores lives, not just appearances.
You cannot solve these enormous, bleeding wounds with legalizing magical thinking.
You cannot chant a few new words, slap new labels on people, and expect centuries of violence, inequality, and trauma to disappear.
The truth is this:
Real inclusion does not ignore the suffering of anyone.
Real inclusion demands that we look squarely at the ways that systems, cultures, and institutions have abandoned so many—especially vulnerable males—and created conditions for more violence.
If you are serious about safety, dignity, and healing, you must be serious about root causes.
Anything less is performance, not progress.
Males have always needed to come together and create real healing spaces for themselves that are steeped in love and accountability. Like women, men need 24/7/365 care options and facilities. BUT, that must come from men. We can’t keep allowing men to shoe horn themselves into spaces that women cultivated for ourselves. Because…..then we no longer have spaces for ourselves!
Women protecting our spaces?
That’s wisdom.
That’s experience speaking.
That’s survival knowledge passed down from women who lived through—and sometimes died because of—being unprotected.
We protect our spaces because we know the reality:
Violence does not vanish because we wish it away.
It vanishes because we confront it fully, courageously, and systemically.
And that work?
That is work for all of us.
***PS…one glance around this world ought to tell us that we all
need many, many, many, more healing spaces.
AND, women need our own healing spaces for our individual and unique needs.
