Tell me who I have to be to gain some reciprocity.... Ms. Lauryn Hill As kids, we used to complain about the guy who pulled our
Tell me who I have to be to gain some reciprocity…. Ms. Lauryn Hill
- As kids, we used to complain about the guy who pulled our braids. The beads fell out. Our beautiful beads. It took us hours to sit and get those intricate braids and beads done. The kids laughed. The adults who were supposed to keep us safe told us that “he liked us.” It did not feel like he liked us, but that’s what they told us.
- When we told them that the male cousin who was playing with us did things to us that should not have happened. They asked him. He said, “We were both playing a game together.” So we both got in trouble ….together. And we still had to go back over there. And endure lectures about remembering to play like “good girls.”
- I went to a high school where girls were suspended for wearing tight jeans. I remember the day that my female principal got set on the right course. For the upteenth time, one of the most voluptuous girls in our school was called to the office for the infraction of “wearing tight jeans.” Gotta protect the boys and male teachers from *Janet.
I am so glad that God allowed me to see Janet’s mother get out of the car in her white nurse’s uniform. Our entire class saw her speed up to the curb, get out, and slam that big heavy metal door from our classroom window, and we KNEW it was about to be on. See, if you “got caught,” your parent had to come pick you up. This was going to be good.
Later Janet told us angrily that her mother said there was not a pair of jeans on this planet that could hide that girl’s hips. (It was the late 1980s but it’s probably still true now). Something about how they need to address the nasty boys and men and stop acting like her daughter’s body was a problem. We know Janet did not tell it all. Her Mama was hot (as in furious, but yeah, that other meaning of hot could apply too. They guys certainly thought so.) when she got out of that car, and even in that old-school nurse’s uniform with those white stockings on…it was very clear she got that whole body from her Mama. They were going to get a generational reckoning. And they deserved it.
She just so happened to have a long torso, a thin waist, and really wide and curvy hips and glutes. She was gorgeous. More than that. She was funny, smart, and friendly. We didn’t run in the same circles, but when we did communicate, she was cool. She didn’t deserve to keep getting singled out by second period. Her body was not an infraction.
That second period class, that was our teacher who sent her. That’s how we got the scoop from Janet. Shortly after that they stopped all that. And moved on to skirt and short lengths. But after I graduated, my principal was still harassing me about my clothing choices when I was supporting my siblings at school events. She didn’t like that I wore jeans. They weren’t tight. By the time I graduated, the baggy look was everything. (TLC, Missy Elliot, 90s Janet) She just didn’t like that I wore jeans.
By the way, it was the female teachers who kept sending her to the office.
Yeah.
We are living in a bizarre, upside-down reality.
Right now, women are being raped by men. Women are being murdered by men. Women’s healthcare is still decades behind, leaving mothers and daughters to suffer from systemic neglect.
Yet, instead of fortifying our defenses, a highly visible faction of women’s groups and individual activists are waging a relentless campaign to do the unthinkable: hand over the keys.
They are actively lobbying to grant men access to the exact spaces, opportunities, and protections that generations of women bled to secure.
The Weaponization of Kindness
Sometimes the only way that you become the villain or the bad guy is because you were the one who said “no” to something.
How did we get here? It is a masterclass in psychological manipulation. By exploiting women’s natural inclination toward empathy, institutions have successfully weaponized the language of “inclusion” to compel compliance. Women are being told that to be good, kind, and progressive, they must voluntarily dismantle their own safety nets.
It is a fatal compromise. You cannot build inclusivity on the carcass of female safety.
This creates a psychological trap:
The Compliance Demand: If you demand privacy in a locker room, a shelter, or a prison, you are labeled cruel.
The Economic Consequence: If you protest the loss of a female-designated corporate fund, scholarship, or athletic title, you are blacklisted.
The Result: Silence. Women are being coerced into participating in their own political and physical eviction because the social cost of speaking out has been made too high to bear.
You cannot build true inclusivity on the carcass of female safety. When “kindness” requires the erasure of boundaries, it is no longer kindness—it is submission.
The Architecture of Institutional Betrayal
This disconnect is driven from the top down. Legacy women’s organizations, non-profits, and academic gender studies departments are no longer beholden to the grassroots women they claim to represent. Instead, they are beholden to:
Corporate and Philanthropic Funding: Corporate donors and massive philanthropic foundations demand adherence to generalized, sweeping diversity initiatives that prioritize abstract concepts of “inclusivity” over the rigid, sex-specific protections needed to mitigate male violence.
Social Capital and Status: For elite activists, compliance brings invitations to international panels, government consulting roles, and cultural prestige. Standing up for the distinct, material boundaries of women brings immediate ostracization.
Consequently, these organizations have co-opted the machinery of feminism to serve an agenda that directly conflicts with female survival. They have traded the gritty, dangerous work of protecting women from physical and systemic harm for the sanitised approval of institutional elites.
A Deadly Disconnect
While elite organizations chase funding and social validation by promoting these open-door policies from the safety of guarded offices, grassroots women are left to deal with the immediate, violent fallout.
The Physical Reality: Male violence is not dropping. The statistics remain a staggering indictment of societal failure.
The Medical Reality: Institutional bias against women’s bodies is not disappearing; women are still routinely dismissed in emergency rooms and under-researched in clinical trials.
The Spatial Reality: Spaces meant for female refuge—where victims of trauma go to heal away from the male gaze and male presence—are being systematically dissolved.
This is no longer a civil academic debate or a minor ideological disagreement. It is an absolute crisis of accountability. When the very advocacy groups established to protect women begin prioritizing the access, comfort, and demands of men over the basic safety and survival of women, it isn’t progress—it’s total surrender.
A Deadly Disconnect
While elite organizations chase institutional funding and social capital by promoting these open-door policies, grassroots women are left to deal with the violent fallout.
The Reality: Male violence is not dropping.
The Reality: Medical bias against women is not disappearing.
The Reality: Spaces meant for female refuge are being systematically dissolved.
This is no longer just an ideological debate. It is a absolute crisis of accountability. When women’s advocacy groups begin prioritizing the demands of men over the survival of women, it isn’t progress—it’s surrender.
Weaponized Empathy Is Not Solidarity. It’s Coercion. – WE Survive Abuse
The Illusion of Progress: Why Women Don’t Have “Spare Rights” to Burn – WE Survive Abuse
Why Are Women’s Rights Treated Like Optional Add-Ons? – WE Survive Abuse
Beyond The Handmaid’s Tale: Understanding Lateral Betrayal – WE Survive Abuse
🛑 You Can’t Build Something Sacred on Disrespect – WE Survive Abuse
Your ‘No’ Isn’t Treated the Same Everywhere – WE Survive Abuse